Hide and Seek (2005 film)
| Hide and Seek | |
|---|---|
 Theatrical release poster |
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| Directed by | John Polson |
| Produced by | Barry Josephson |
| Written by | Ari Schlossberg |
| Starring | |
| Cinematography | Dariusz Wolski |
| Editing by | Jeffrey Ford |
| Distributed by | 20th Century Fox |
| Release date(s) | January 27, 2005 (Argentina) January 28, 2005 |
| Running time | 101 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $25 million |
| Box office | $122,650,962 |
Hide and Seek is a 2005 American horror film starring Robert De Niro, Famke Janssen and Dakota Fanning. It was directed by John Polson. The film opened in the United States in January 2005 and was top of the box office. It did not reach the same level of critical success; it garnered mainly negative reviews, receiving only a 13% on Rotten Tomatoes.[1] The performances of the actors were highly praised however.
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[edit] Plot summary
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David and his Daughter Emily (Dakota Fanning) Move downstate New York after Emilys Mom, Allison, commits suicide.
David meets local woman Elizabeth (Elisabeth Shue) and her niece, Amy, who is roughly the same age as Emily. Hoping to cultivate a new, healthy friendship for Emily, David sets up a playdate for her. Amy is anxious to become friends immediately, but the playdate is spoiled when Emily cuts up Amy's doll's face. After Amy runs out off, Emily tells David that she doesn't need any more friends. Despite the unsuccessful playdate, David and Elizabeth hit it off. David invites her over to dinner one night, where Emily acts increasingly hostile towards her.
When a family friend, Katherine , comes to visit David and Emily, Emily reveals that she and Charlie have a mutual desire to upset her father. Soon, they meet a man and a woman who are their neighbors. David is wary of their unusual interest in Emily. He later discovers that the reason for this is that the couple had a daughter who recently died from cancer and looks like Emily. Later, when David visits the woman, she nervously and ambiguously implies that her husband has begun abusing her in response to their child's death, emotionally and perhaps even physically.
Some time later, Elizabeth visits the house, hoping to make peace with Emily. When Emily tells her that she is playing hide-and-seek with Charlie, Elizabeth indulges her by pretending to look for Charlie. When she opens the closet, someone bursts out and pushes Elizabeth out a second-story window to her death. After the police discover her car crashed near David's house, David asks Emily what happened. Emily bursts into tears and holds up a toy clock rinning and it's hands pointing to the hall. David wondering why it pointed to the bathroom walks into the bathroom, and is shocked when he finds Elizebeth dead in the bathtub. David asks Emily who did it, She tells him "Charlie did it" and David yells at her, still not beliving this Charlie nonsense. She cries and David goes outside to look for Charlie.
David, armed with a knife, goes outside, where he meets the neighbor who has become friends with Emily. David assumes that his neighbor is Charlie and begins to act aggressively. Becoming suspicious that David has killed his own daughter, the neighbor asks to see Emily, but David cuts the neighbor with his knife. The neighbor then calls the police.
Back in the house, David finds that, although he had seemingly been in his study many times (listening to his stereo and writing a journal), the boxes were actually never unpacked. With this, David realizes that he has split personality and that Charlie is not imaginary at all, but that in fact Charlie is David himself. Whenever it appeared David was in his study, Charlie was actually in control. David also realizes that under his Charlie personality, he killed his wife and then made it appear to be a suicide. He also fully recalls the events of the New Year's Eve party the night before his wife's death. Immediately after the countdown to midnight, David noticed his wife slip away. He followed her and caught her kissing in a stairwell with another guest. Charlie was created as a way for David's rage to destroy his wife, something that David himself was too decent to do. David realizes, Charlie killed his wife, his wife didn't commit suicide, Charlie is the reason he had that spot on his hand, Charlie isn't imagenary, he IS Charlie.
Once David realizes he is Charlie, David gives up and realizes there is nothing he can do to save himself or Emily, letting Charlie take over his body. Emily is scared, when the local sheriff arrives she takes this as a chance to hide. As the lights go off and the sheriff searches the house, Charlie kills him, Emily calls Katherine for help as Charlie drags his body to the basement.
Katherine arrives and is pushed in the basement by Charlie. David (Charlie), determined to play a hideous game of hide-and-seek, starts counting; Emily dashes and hides. She tricks Charlie and manages to lock herself in her room. As Charlie tries to break in, she climbs out from the window and runs into the cave where she originally met Charlie. Meanwhile, Katherine takes the gun from the dead sheriff, breaks out of the basement, and calls for Emily. Kathrine Reaches Emily's room she hears Charlie calling for her and jumps out of the window and quietly follows Charlies voice to the cave. When Kathrine arrives Charlie pretends to be David and attacks Katherine when she seems most less likley to shoot the trigger. Emily screams and then comes out from behind the rock she hid behind, begging Charlie to let Katherine go. Charlie laughs and turns on and off the flashlight he has getting closer and closer to Emily. When Kathrine retrieves her gun she is just in time and shoots Charlie killing him and he falls into the water.
Sometime later, Emily is preparing for school in her new life with Katherine. But Emily's drawing of herself with Katherine has two heads, suggesting that she now also suffers from split personality.
[edit] Endings
This film has five different endings. The US theatrical release had the following ending:
- Preparing for school while living a new life with Katherine, Emily draws a picture of herself and Katherine, suggesting that everything is fine. But when the camera cuts back to Emily's drawing, Emily has two heads.
Another four were included on the DVD released in the USA:
- Ending #1: The same as the ending in the US theatre release, except that the drawing Emily makes of herself has only one head, suggesting that she is fine and does not suffer from the same disease that resulted in the death of both her parents.
- Ending #2 (this is the ending in the international theatrical version): Emily is shown seemingly in a new apartment bedroom, and Katherine's actions mirror that of her mother's at the beginning of the film. She reassures her love to Emily and begins to leave the room. Emily asks Katherine to leave the door open, but Katherine insists she cannot. As the door shuts, a protected window is visible on the door. The next cut is of Katherine locking the door from the outside, revealing this assumed apartment bedroom is actually a hospital room in a children's psychiatric ward.
- Ending #3: Same as above in the psychiatric ward. After Katherine shuts the door, Emily gets out of bed and does a Hide and Seek countdown. She nears the closet, opens, and smiles at her own reflection in the mirror.
- Ending #4: An ending similar to that in the psychiatric ward, but in this ending Emily is not in a ward but her new home, again playing Hide and Seek with her own reflection.
An additional scene that was planned, but never filmed, involved David briefly regaining control of his body as he lay dying of his gunshot wound and embracing Emily as he died. The producers said it would have been a chance for David and Emily to finally reconcile, following their troubled relationship throughout the film.
According to the commentary, the directors, and producers chose the ending they did for the default DVD and domestic release because it gave the audience a relief at the end of the film. They felt the hospital room endings were too dark and suggested that Emily is being punished for things she did not do. After the Emily character is basically thrown into terror for the last 45 minutes of the film, they felt it was time to give her an emotional break, and the happy ending was chosen, though it is not necessarily 'happy' as she still draws a double head, implying that she suffers from split personality.
[edit] Main cast
- Robert De Niro as David Callaway / Charlie
- Dakota Fanning as Emily Callaway
- Famke Janssen as Katherine
- Elisabeth Shue as Elizabeth
- Amy Irving as Allison Callaway
- Melissa Leo as Laura
- Josh Flitter as Little Boy (uncredited)
[edit] Box office
- US Gross Domestic Takings: US$ 51,100,486
- + Other International Takings: equivalent of $US71,544,334
- = Gross Worldwide Takings: $US122,644,820
[edit] Reception
The film received poor reviews. It holds a 13% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.[2] BBC Movies gave the film two stars out of five, commenting that "Robert De Niro continues his long slide into mediocrity with yet another charmless psycho-thriller."[3]
[edit] See also
[edit] References
[edit] External links
- Official website[dead link]
- Archived July 18, 2007 at the Wayback Machine
- Hide and Seek at AllRovi
- Hide and Seek at Box Office Mojo
- Hide and Seek at the Internet Movie Database
- Hide and Seek at Metacritic
- Hide and Seek at Rotten Tomatoes
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