Tagline: Come out come out whatever you are.
That command is familiar to everyone who has played the children’s game, Hide and Seek. The words and game take us back to an innocent, carefree time in our lives, where the simple goal was to find hiding playmates. Many children could even enjoy a spirited game with imaginary friends. But then, imaginary friends can sometimes seem so real…
For young Emily Callaway, her games of Hide and Seek with an imaginary friend named Charlie have become anything but simple and innocent. Instead, she finds herself in the middle of a series of increasingly nightmarish acts that even her father David cannot stop. Who – or what – is Charlie? David wonders. How can an “imaginary” entity have this kind of hold on her? Maybe Charlie is not imaginary at all, but instead a flesh-and-blood, malevolent presence?
Academy Award winner Robert De Niro stars as David Callaway, a troubled father and widower in the suspense-thriller Hide and Seek, and Dakota Fanning portrays his young daughter Emily, who is hiding an incredible secret. As the story opens, Callaway’s wife Alison (Amy Irving) dies suddenly, traumatizing Emily.
Hide and Seek is a 2005 American psychological horror-thriller film starring Robert De Niro and Dakota Fanning. It was directed by John Polson. The film opened in the United States on January 28, 2005, and grossed $122 million worldwide. Rotten Tomatoes cited praise for De Niro and Fanning for their performances, though its consensus called the film “derivative, illogical and somewhat silly”. Fanning received an MTV Movie Award for Best Frightened Performance in 2005.
20th Century Fox released two versions of the film: the international version and the domestic version. Both versions received different endings. The domestic version was released in the US, while the international version was released to other countries. Both the international and domestic versions submitted to the BBFC were actually released to UK cinemas. In its opening weekend in US theatres, the film grossed $21,959,233. In the US, the film grossed $51,100,486. The film brought in $71,544,334 internationally. Overall, the film grossed $122,650,962 worldwide.
About the Story
Following his discovery of the body of his wife (Amy Irving) in a bathtub after her apparent suicide, Dr. David Callaway (Robert De Niro), a psychologist working in New York City, decides to move with his 9-year-old daughter Emily (Dakota Fanning) to Upstate New York. There, Emily makes an apparently imaginary friend she calls “Charlie”. Her friendship with Charlie begins to disturb David when he discovers their cat dead in the bathtub, whom Emily claims was a victim of “Charlie”. Meanwhile, David suffers from nightmares of the New Year’s Eve party that occurred the night before his wife died.
When a family friend, Dr. Katherine Carson (Famke Janssen), comes to visit David and Emily, Emily reveals that she and Charlie have a mutual desire to upset her father. Soon, they meet Laura (Melissa Leo) and Stephen (Robert John Burke) 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 looked like Emily. Later, when David visits Laura, she nervously and ambiguously implies that her husband has begun abusing her in response to their child’s death, emotionally and perhaps even physically.
David meets Elizabeth Young (Elisabeth Shue), a local woman, 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 play date for her. Amy is anxious to become friends immediately, but the play date is spoiled when Emily cuts up Amy’s doll’s face. After Amy runs out of the house, Emily tells David that she doesn’t need any more friends.
Despite the unsuccessful play date, David and Elizabeth hit it off. David invites her over to dinner one night, where Emily acts increasingly hostile towards her. 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 claims Charlie caused her death by pushing her out the window and forced Emily to help him move the body. She tells David the location of her body. A terrified David discovers Elizabeth’s body in the bathroom in a bathtub full of blood. David asks Emily where Charlie is, and Emily tells him that Charlie has “just left”.
Continue Reading and View the Theatrical Trailer
Hide and Seek (2005)
Directed by: John Polson
Starring: Robert De Niro, Dakota Fanning, Famke Janssen, Dylan Baker, Amy Irving, Elisabeth Shue, Melissa Leo, Robert John Burke, Molly Grant Kallins, David Chandler
Screenplay by: Ari Schlossberg
Production Design by: Steven J. Jordan
Cinematography by: Dariusz Wolski
Film Editing by: Jeffrey Ford
Costume Design by: Aude Bronson-Howard
Set Decoration by: Beth Kushnick
Art Direction by: Emily Beck, Dennis Bradford
Music by: John Ottman
MPAA Rating: R for frightening sequences and violence.
Studio: 20th Century Fox
Release Date: January 28, 2005
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