Movies
Weekend Box Office
Film Awards & Top 10s By Year
All-Time High Scores
All-Time Low Scores
Wide Releases
Now In Theaters
76
(500) Days of Summer
60
9
17
All About Steve
37
Amelia
53
Astro Boy
66
Bandslam
45
Box, The
61
Capitalism: A Love Story
55
Christmas Carol, A
43
Cirque du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant
66
Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs
29
Collector, The
23
Couples Retreat
80
District 9
61
Extract
39
Fame
30
Final Destination, The
34
Fourth Kind, The
60
Funny People
32
G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra
27
Gamer
41
G-Force
39
Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard, The
46
Halloween II
73
Hangover, The
78
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
55
I Can Do Bad All By Myself
66
Informant!, The
69
Inglourious Basterds
58
Invention of Lying, The
47
Jennifer's Body
66
Julie & Julia
34
Law Abiding Citizen
33
Love Happens
54
Men Who Stare At Goats, The
67
Michael Jackson's This Is It
51
My Sister's Keeper
42
Orphan
28
Pandorum
63
Perfect Getaway, A
86
Ponyo![]()
35
Post Grad
48
Proposal, The
30
Saw VI
53
Shorts
24
Sorority Row
83
Star Trek![]()
33
Stepfather, The
45
Surrogates
55
Taking Woodstock
47
Time Traveler's Wife
96
Toy Story/Toy Story 2 3D![]()
35
Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen
28
Ugly Truth, The
88
Up![]()
71
Where the Wild Things Are
67
Whip It
28
Whiteout
73
Zombieland
Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.
Limited Releases
Now In Theaters
58
(Untitled)
96
35 Shots of Rum![]()
56
Adam
72
Adela
39
Adventures of Power
78
Afghan Star
61
After the Storm
66
Afterschool
xx
All the Best
58
American Casino
72
Amreeka
48
Antichrist
73
Araya
62
Art & Copy
55
As Seen Through These Eyes
76
Baader Meinhof Complex, The
86
Beaches of Agnes, The![]()
13
Beautiful Life, A
70
Beeswax
35
Beyond a Reasonable Doubt
71
Big Fan
66
Black Dynamite
51
Blind Date
xx
Blind Pig Who Wants to Fly
76
Bliss
35
Blue Tooth Virgin, The
26
Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day, The
57
Boys Are Back, The
45
Brief Interviews with Hideous Men
81
Bright Star![]()
70
Bronson
45
Burning Plain, The
xx
Carriers
55
Casi Divas
57
Chelsea on the Rocks
62
Cloud 9
65
Coco Before Chanel
69
Cold Souls
59
Collapse
44
Confessionsofa Ex-Doofus-ItchyFooted Mutha
82
Cove, The![]()
75
Crude
82
Damned United, The![]()
67
Departures
xx
Dil Bole Hadippa
71
Disgrace
xx
Do Knot Disturb
70
Earth Days
24
Eating Out 3: All You Can Eat
85
Education, An![]()
55
Endgame
xx
Eulogy for a Vampire
xx
Everyone Else
xx
Fatal Promises
56
Fifty Dead Men Walking
62
Five Minutes of Heaven
74
Flame & Citron
49
Food Beware: The French Organic Revolution
80
Food, Inc.
28
Free Style
xx
From Mexico with Love
50
Fuel
25
Gentlemen Broncos
50
Give Me Your Hand
58
Gogol Bordello Non-Stop
72
Good Hair
89
Goodbye Solo![]()
52
Grace
64
Harmony and Me
81
Headless Woman, The![]()
xx
Heretics, The
63
Horse Boy, The
73
House of the Devil, The
xx
How to Seduce Difficult Women
74
Humpday
94
Hurt Locker, The![]()
29
I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell
16
If One Thing Matters: A Film About Wolfgang Tillmans
75
In Search of Beethoven
83
In the Loop![]()
61
Intimate Enemies
42
Irene in Time
70
It Might Get Loud
46
Killing Kasztner
19
Labor Day
xx
Laila's Birthday
41
Little Ashes
41
Little Traitor, The
66
Liverpool
34
Looking for Palladin
80
Lorna's Silence
83
Maid, The![]()
xx
Ministers, The
59
More Than a Game
67
Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers, The
34
Motherhood
62
My One and Only
xx
Mystery Team
48
New York, I Love You
73
Night and Day
66
No Impact Man
47
Ong Bak 2: The Beginning
34
Other Man, The
xx
Painter Sam Francis, The
54
Paper Heart
xx
Paradise
68
Paranormal Activity
68
Paris
44
Peter and Vandy
35
Play the Game
77
Precious: Based on the Novel by Sapphire
xx
Pretty Ugly People
65
Providence Effect, The
76
Rembrandt's J'accuse
69
September Issue, The
79
Serious Man, A
40
Shrink
61
Skin
77
Skin Too Few: The Days of Nick Drake, A
xx
Skiptracers
46
Splinterheads
39
St. Trinian's
89
Still Walking![]()
50
Stoning of Soraya M., The
55
Storm
65
Tetro
70
That Evening Sun
72
Thirst
xx
Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas 3D (re-release)
61
Trucker
xx
Turning Green
83
U2 3D![]()
66
Unmade Beds
66
Unmistaken Child
70
Visual Acoustics
55
Walt & El Grupo
67
Way We Get By, The
69
We Live in Public
64
Wedding Song, The
64
Where is Where?
xx
White on Rice
74
Woman in Berlin, A
69
World's Greatest Dad
70
Yes Men Fix the World
69
Yoo-Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg
xx
You, the Living
Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.
Hide and Seek
EMAILPRINTTwentieth Century Fox Film Corp.

Generally unfavorable reviews
Based on 34 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
Based on 38 votes
Read user comments
Rate this movie >
Movie Info
Genre(s): Drama | Horror | Suspense/Thriller
Written by: Ari Schlossberg
Directed by: John Polson
Release Date:
Theatrical: January 28, 2005
DVD: July 5, 2005
Running Time: 105 minutes, Color
Origin: USA
Summary
RATING: R for frightening sequences and violence
Starring Robert De Niro, Dakota Fanning, Famke Janssen, Elisabeth Shue, Amy Irving, Dylan Baker, Melissa Leo, and Robert John Burke
A widower (DeNiro) suspects his 9 year-old daughter (Fanning) has come up with an unexpected way of dealing with her mother's death through a terrifying "imaginary" friend.
Also On Metacritic
FILM: Swimfan
Also On The Web: Internet Movie Database View The Trailer Official Studio Site
What The Critics Said
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
Washington Post Desson Thomson
As cliche-ridden horror films go, Hide and Seek builds a pretty darn good mousetrap.
Read Full Review >Premiere Kevin Allison
It’s tightly paced and confidently styled. These times call for more daring in our horror films, but for this weekend, this will do the trick.
Read Full Review >Entertainment Weekly Scott Brown
Hide and Seek, despite early signs of higher goals, is a factory-standard box of shocks.
Read Full Review >Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea
The movie's main purpose seems to be to make audiences squirm uncomfortably. Yelp and shriek in armchair-clawing glee? Not likely.
Read Full Review >LA Weekly Chuck Wilson
While the final revelation is laughably absurd, DeNiro and Fanning are so far inside their roles that one can't giggle for long.
Read Full Review >The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Rick Groen
From the base-model script to the assembly-line thrills, everything about Hide and Seek is generic except its star.
Read Full Review >New York Daily News Jami Bernard
Aside from its relentless exploitation of a child, this minor thriller features an intriguing beginning, a middling middle and an increasingly silly end, with a multitude of red herrings going squoosh underfoot.
Read Full Review >Slate David Edelstein
The movie is OK for a January horror picture, but given the premise and the cast--it should wring you out emotionally as it's scaring you witless.
Read Full Review >Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert
It's not technically true to say the movie cheats, but let's say it abandons the truth and depth of its earlier scenes.
Read Full Review >Miami Herald Connie Ogle
Its frights are not that chilling or original, its secrets more run-of-the-mill than astounding.
Read Full Review >Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek
Through its first two-thirds, at least, Hide and Seek does a good enough job of piquing our curiosity that the movie's ultimate dumbness is more than a minor insult.
Read Full Review >Washington Post Ann Hornaday
Jigh class briefly gives way to high camp, which then itself dissipates to an anticlimactic thud.
Read Full Review >Seattle Post-Intelligencer Sean Axmaker
Takes itself seriously enough to pull off a clever bit of sleight of hand, but doesn't have much to offer once the twist comes out of hiding.
Read Full Review >Variety Derek Elley
A routine haunted child psychothriller gussied up with A-list casting.
Read Full Review >TV Guide Maitland McDonagh
The film's last 20 minutes devolve into a tedious slog through the kind of pointless, predictable running and screaming that give horror movies a bad name.
Read Full Review >The Hollywood Reporter Michael Rechtshaffen
There are twist endings and there are twist endings -- and then there is the logic-strangling, complete cheat of a reveal that takes place in the final 10 minutes of Hide and Seek. It's so absolutely preposterous that it stops the film cold and draws a collective "Aw c'mon!"
Read Full Review >The New York Times Manohla Dargis
That Mr. De Niro and especially Miss Fanning manage to register through all this murk is a testament to their talent, which however squandered does nonetheless shine.
Read Full Review >Empire Nick De Semlyen
Aside from some effectively understated acting from the leads, there's not much to remember or recommend.
Read Full Review >Boston Globe Janice Page
Ignore the hype. You won't find anything startling or memorable in the derivative Hide and Seek.
Read Full Review >Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman
Far be it from me to spoil the secret, but I will say this: The last reel should've been sent straight to the city dump.
Read Full Review >Austin Chronicle Marc Savlov
It all falls apart at the end, however, and in such a loud and abrasive way that it makes Brian De Palma's "Raising Cain" look like a model of restraint.
Read Full Review >Los Angeles Times Kevin Crust
Unless you're a connoisseur of movies that are so bad they're good, Hide and Seek is one game you're not going to want to play.
Read Full Review >Chicago Reader J.R. Jones
De Niro gives a crafty performance, and director John Polson (Swimfan) maintains a pleasantly low-key suspense. But the ending is a disappointment.
Read Full Review >The Onion (A.V. Club) Nathan Rabin
Like far too many junky post-"Sixth Sense" thrillers, Hide And Seek essentially exists for the sake of its third-act plot twist, but the climactic revelation merely pushes it from bad to worse.
Read Full Review >San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle
A thriller without thrills. It's also a thriller that cheats. The story is stretched to feature length only by having the film's incidents arranged in such a way as to reveal as little as possible.
Read Full Review >New York Post Debra Birnbaum
A schlocky thriller choking under the weight of its own psychobabble.
Read Full Review >ReelViews James Berardinelli
It is a ghastly experience, and I left the theater feeling as if I had waded neck-deep through a stream of raw sewage.
Read Full Review >Dallas Observer Luke Y. Thompson
May steal from the best, but it does it so badly and obviously that it has to depend upon gratuitous shock-cuts and soundtrack stings to elicit any kind of reflex-action fright from the viewer.
Read Full Review >Film Threat Elias Sevada
Polson offers up a few chilling scares, but the underwritten screenplay really does show off its weaknesses.
Read Full Review >Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern
Robert De Niro collects another stupendous paycheck for starring in another piece of exploitable junk.
Village Voice Jessica Winter
Hide and Seek follows no semblance of internal logic--the unveiling of Charlie is a ludicrous cheat, the last reel a unique paroxysm of rancid idiocy.
Read Full Review >What Our Users Said
The average user rating for this movie is 5.9 (out of 10) based on 38 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
Jess P. gave it a9:
I thought it was really good and it was jumpy and very twisted!!
Alma L. gave it a10:
Just Great!!!
Brian K. gave it an8:
Ethan, don't worry what Sam says about you never being a friend of Dakota's. Dakota is very open to her fans. In one rare moment, I was able to visit with her for 25 minutes before she had to leave. I even got a hug out of it at the end, which she gave without hesitation. Anyway, I only saw the movie because Dakota was in it. Yes, the plot is borrowed, yes the story is weak in some areas, but Fanning is nothing less than hypnotic--pure magic.
Mark B. gave it a3:
Little Dakota Fanning has got to be not only the most well-adjusted child actress in Hollywood history, but the most emotionally healthy and stable youngster in America PERIOD. Not only did she spend 90% of her screen time in War of the Worlds screaming at and running from Martians, but earlier this year was dealing with parental death, psychotic imaginary playmates and 87 other varieties of childhood trauma (to say nothing of having to look and dress like The Addams Family's Wednesday, only with brown sweaters instead of black dresses) in this derivative, mean-spirited horror movie frrom the director of Swimfan. (I'm sure Orson Welles never had a #1 box office weekend as a director, but this hack gets two different ones. Is there no justice in this world or what?) The usual array of pseudo-ominous tracking shots and cheeseball false alarms is made even more predictable by the fact that two of Robert DeNiro's lovely, talented costars, Elisabeth Shue and Amy Irving, are former Oscar nominees who've clearly seen better days, which gives you an idea of the thanklessness of their roles AND the relative length of their screen time. (Melissa Leo, of TV's acclaimed Homicide: Life on the Streets, also turns up, giving a performance that's both creepy and touching...and way too good for this.) Chances are you'll alternate yor viewing time between exclamations of "Man, those filmmakers are sick puppies!" and "Just how stupid do they think we are?" A couple of rather original jolts (such as Dakota's flip-movie book) make this vaguely better than DeNiro's last horror outing, the rock-bottom Godsend...but that's like saying that sawing your thumb and forefinger off in a workshop accident is preferable to losing your whole hand. And by the way, remember when DeNiro's appearance in a non-Scorsese film was a virtual guarantee that you were STILL going to see something terrific--be it an ambitious epic like The Mission, a guest turn in The Untouchables or even a purely commercial action-comedy like Midnight Run? The (hopefully not) late, lamented IFC game show Ultimate Film fanatic had a trivia category last year entitled "DeNiro: The Sellout Years"; if the writers of that category had known at the time of this and Godsend, they might well have altered the title to "DeNiro: The Whorehouse Years"!
matt a. gave it a6:
I think that most critics are missing the point. Yea, the screenplay isn't exactly first-rate and De Niro isn't as good as he used to be, but these kind of movies are out to win oscars, they supposed to scare the shit out of you, and frankly, I was scared, or better yet, disturbed. This was mostly due to Dakota Fanning's performance, which is nothing short of incredible for a child her age. Again, nothing amazing here, and the ending is contrived and a little maddening, but take it for what it is and you won't be all that disappointed.
ryan m gave it a2:
De Niro's performance is adequate, and the first half of the film builds some suspense. But the film eventually falls apart and becomes cliche and predictable, to the point of uneven silliness. Too many movies these days are looking for that "surprise" ending without effectively building the plot or characters. What usually turns out is an uneven movie with few truly suspensful moments and predictable outcomes. And Dakota's hype as a promising actress is just that. The future will tell. But overacting, dramatizing, and unmemorable performances won't help her now. Plus, boy is she ugly in this movie. Almost to the point of not being able to watch it.
Sam gave it an8:
Matt E, if you can't spell suspense, don't use in a sentence. Sorry, just had to say that though. Ethan N, you should write a review, not a letter to someone you have no chance with because of her age (she's younger) and fame. Just had to say that to, sorry. This is a great film in my opinion, I wasn't dissapointed at all, except for the surprise. It's a good idea, I just predicted it. I swear I did. It's a good film, not terrifying, but eerie.
