Cheap Hide and Seek (Full Screen Edition) (DVD) (John Polson) Price

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Customer Reviews of Hide and Seek (Full Screen Edition)

Surprisingly good. De Niro is back?
The best horror movies are the psychological mysteries, the ones that keep us wondering if the creepy stuff resides in the characters' heads or if a ghost really does live in the attic. <
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>Even if we eventually encounter spirits in these films, there usually is a foundation of psychological truth: It isn't just the bumps and shrieks that unnerve us but also the way we identify with a character's emotions or guilty conscience. <
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>Hide and Seek is a psychological horror movie. For the first hour or so it builds inexorably to an excruciating level of dread. It does this so well, we're willing to forgive the small lapses of logic it takes to get us there. <
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>As the tension builds, however, so does our concern about how the movie will end. This is something quite apart from suspense. It has to do with our awareness that Hollywood, with few exceptions, seems no longer capable of making decent horror films. Far too many start out interestingly, then disintegrate into clich? and utter illogic. <
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>Before The Sixth Sense (1999), we could count on a gratuitous bloodbath and irrational behavior. We still can count on a bloodbath and irrational behavior, but now horror movies that aspire to the appearance of smartness want to make us smack our heads and go, "Wow!" <
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>After the "surprise ending," we're expected to rewind the movie in our minds and gasp at the clues we missed. <
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>Rewatching Hide and Seek we'll just feel miffed at being hoodwinked. The film is built on such an outrageous - and now overused - concept it makes us want to discount the effectiveness of the first half. But no. It's well-acted and cannily crafted in the beginning. We can appreciate it for that, even if it ultimately is ludicrous. <
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>Robert De Niro, who seems intent on dismantling the reputation he built in the 1970s as the greatest actor of his generation, plays David Callaway, a New York psychologist whose wife (Amy Irving) commits suicide. David's young daughter, Emily (Dakota Fanning), happens upon the scene as he discovers the body, and it traumatizes her. <
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>To get her away from bad memories, David moves with her to a large secluded house in the country. Some of the neighbors seem a bit weird. <
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>David must have been an extraordinarily prosperous psychologist, because essentially he makes Emily his only patient. We see him setting up an office and keeping a journal in which he makes notes about her condition. <
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>Meanwhile, she explores her new surroundings. Soon she has a new best friend, Charlie, who may not be as imaginary as he first seems. <
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>Frequently, at 2:06 in the morning - the time David awoke to find his wife's body - he wakes up in a sweat. Repeatedly, he's drawn to the bathroom where someone has scrawled accusations on the walls or created grisly re-enactments of the death scene. David blames Emily, but she insists it was Charlie. <
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>Things grow worse from there. Much worse. It's a horror film, remember? <
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>The performances are uniformly fine. Famke Janssen plays a New York colleague who takes special interest in Emily. Elizabeth Shue plays a woman David becomes interested in but whom Emily can't stand. Melissa Leo is a troubled next-door neighbor with a creepy husband. Dylan Baker is the sheriff. <
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>Fanning, who played the young kidnap victim in Man on Fire, is particularly effective. <
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>De Niro is De Niro. His commitment to the role seems total. He remains a fine actor though his movie choices are unfathomable.

Watch through splayed fingers
I'm a big fan of horror movies that never let the monster out of the closet. Much more frightening than a snarling, dripping beast is the sight of the closet itself, slighty ajar, and filled with all possible terrors of which your mind can conceive. <
>After a decade or so of slasher flicks and in-your-face gore, Hitchcockian terror is making a comeback, and "Hide and Seek" is a great example of the revival. <
>Not that it's short on fright. On the contrary, it's filled with scenes that will make you come out of your seat as though you'd sat on a hornet. This is a flick that will make you uncomfortable from the start. What you don't see can hurt you and there is plenty of those unseen dangers here. <
>It's not the creature that crawls from under the bed, but the bed itelf. Something MIGHT be there and that lurking possibility with cause your muscles to knot and your fingers to clench tighter around your date's hand. It's not a mutant freak that lives in the basement, but what MIGHT live in the basement that gets you. This is a movie that causes your imagination to betray you and it does it deftly, with ample darkness and creeking doors and shadows that move just on the edge of vision. <
>There is a scene in the movie where Elisabeth Shue playfully pulls open a closet door in an attempt to endear herself to the child. When she does, it... Man, that scene alone is worth the price of admission. <
>De Niro is as believable as a pained child psychologist as he is as a mafia henchman, a beleaguered boxing champ, or a menacing ex-con. I mean, does he actually get shorter for some roles? <
>Fanning is talented beyond her years, with expressions and inflections of her voice that will make you sad, make you mad or wrap your spine in ice. <
>For outright fright, this one scores high. If you're dating someone who tends to get clingy when things get tense, bring him or her to "Hide and Seek." Act brave, lend a shoulder and try not to break her fingers during the really nasty scenes.