HIDE AND SEEK is a creepy psychological horror starring Robert De Niro, cast against type as a psychologist and family man, who goes to live in a new rural home along with his daughter Dakota Fanning after his wife's tragic suicide.

The film has much in common with the current run of haunted house flicks like SINISTER and MAMA, in that it focus exclusively on building a tense atmosphere with suggestions of the supernatural. You can tell through the presence of muddled flashbacks that there's going to be a twist at the climax, and sure enough in the last half hour things go in a very different (and, it has to be said, disappointing) direction. The reason for the disappointment? It all gets very over the top and Hollywood-ised, in the worst way.

Until that point, the film isn't bad, but it is a bit dull. De Niro is at his best when he plays angry or psychotic, but his character is rather dull here for the most part. He's still the best thing in it, however. I found the casting of Dakota Fanning a real mis-step, given that she fails to elicit the least bit of sympathy for her irritating character. The supporting cast are quite good, including a strong Famke Janssen, an almost unrecognisable Amy Irving (from CARRIE) and a youthful-looking Elizabeth Shue. But it's not enough to change HIDE AND SEEK from being anything but a distinctly average movie.

David Callaway (Robert De Niro) lives in NYC when suddenly his wife Alison (Amy Irving) commits suicide. His daughter Emily (Dakota Fanning) is suffering from the shock of seeing her dead body and they move to Woodland in upstate NY. Emily starts talking to an imaginary friend named Charlie. Laura (Melissa Leo) and Steven (Robert John Burke) are the neighbors next door who suffered a great loss. Elizabeth (Elisabeth Shue) is a divorced mom who befriends David and has her own little girl. Katherine (Famke Janssen) is the doctor friend from NYC. Dylan Baker plays Sheriff Hafferty.

This movie moves far too slowly for far too long. It has a bit of moody atmosphere but the movie tries to stretch it out. There isn't anything scary for that long stretch. The acting is fine by the outstanding cast, and I'm not sure if they could have done anything better. Of course, there is the twist ending. It doesn't really set it up properly, and it feels very jarring. I don't think it's wrong. I just wish that they put down better clues to the twist.

***This comment definitely contains spoilers!!!*** Robert de Niro's recent movie "Hide and Seek" is, as another IMDb commentator stated, a "watchable" movie. Although it is decently made, its failure to become a box office success was due to its script which was rather cliché. The plot line that the central character of the movie turned out to be the real villain is nothing new. Probably it was first used by Agatha Christie in her novel "Murder of Roger Ackroyd" approximately eighty years ago. Even with the further twist that this central character/villain himself probably did not remember the crimes due to memory suppression, the plot line is still nothing new. Rod Serling and others used this kind of plot line decades ago. (Some readers may recall a 1963 Twilight Zone episode "The New Exhibit" in which the central character played by Martin Balsam kept on killing and killing but did not remember any of his crimes due to his memory suppression. He blamed the murders on supernatural acts by his wax statues.) Because of this hackneyed plot, the so-called surprise ending of this movie was not much of a surprise. The only unexpected thing about the ending of the movie which is worth mentioning is the fact that the screenwriters steered the moviegoers to think that this movie was a horror movie in which an apparition named Charlie was behind all the horrible things occurring in the Calloway household. The screenwriters of the movie borrowed liberally from the Japanese movie "Dark Water" to make the movie look like a horror movie. For example, just like in the Japanese movie "Dark Water," 1) Calloway household consists of one parent and one child, 2) Charlie initially revealed himself only to the child and 3) Charlie seems to be associated with water, especially to the bathtub. At the beginning of "Hide and Seek," many fans of Asian horror movies and similar movies assumed this movie to be a horror movie, similar to "Dark Water." To the surprise of some of the moviegoers, the movie turned out to be a suspense movie in which none of the horrible events in the movie was supernatural. They were all the acts of the dual personality of the insane central character played by de Niro.

Although de Niro did an admirable job playing the mentally ill psychologist, his acting was not good enough to save this rather cliché script. "Hide and Seek" was merely watchable, but not very unique.