Hide and Seek (2005 film)

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Hide and Seek
Directed by John Polson
Produced by Barry Josephson
Written by Ari Schlossberg
Starring Robert De Niro
Dakota Fanning
Famke Janssen
Elisabeth Shue
Amy Irving
Dylan Baker
Distributed by 20th Century Fox
Release date(s) January 28, 2005
Running time 101 minutes
Language English
Budget ~ US$30,000,000
Allmovie profile
IMDb profile

Hide and Seek is a 2005 film starring Robert De Niro 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; the majority of the mixed reviews it received were negative, receiving only a 12% on Rotten Tomatoes.[1] The performances of the actors were highly praised however.

Contents

[edit] Plot summary

After the suicide of his wife, David Callaway discovers that his nine-year-old daughter Emily behaves strangely as she finds solace in her creepy imaginary friend who wants to be called 'Charlie'. The movie proceeds with increasingly disturbing events being perpetuated by 'Charlie' with Emily's help.

The twist occurs when, late in the movie, David discovers that he has split personality. David realizes that Charlie is not imaginary at all, but that in fact, he is Charlie. David also discovers that under his Charlie personality, he killed his wife and then made it appear to be a suicide. David's personality then becomes fully consumed by the increasingly violent Charlie. Emily calls Katherine, a family friend, for assistance and Katherine arrives in time to rescue Emily. Katherine shoots David/Charlie in the cave where Emily first met 'Charlie'.

[edit] Endings

This film has a total of five different endings, The US theater release had the following ending:

  • Preparing for school while living a new life with Katherine, Emily's 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:

  • The same as the ending in the US theater release, except that the drawing Emily makes of herself has only one head.
  • 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. Emily gets out of bed and does a Hide and Seek countdown. She nears the closet, opens, and smiles at her own reflection.
  • Same as above in the psychiatric ward, but without the Hide and Seek countdown.
  • An ending similar to that in the psychiatric ward, but in this ending Emily is not in a ward but her new home. After Katherine shuts the door she gets out of bed to play Hide and Seek with her own reflection.

According to the commentary, the directors, screenwriters, 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.

[edit] Cast

[edit] Box office

US Gross Domestic Takings: US$ 51,100,486
+ Other International Takings: $71,544,334
= Gross Worldwide Takings: $122,644,820

[edit] See also

[edit] Trivia

 Trivia sections are discouraged under Wikipedia guidelines.
The article could be improved by integrating relevant items and removing inappropriate ones.
  • AnnaSophia Robb tried out for the role of Emily Callaway and was deeply considered but the part was given to Dakota Fanning.[citation needed]
  • David has several noticeable similarities to Norman Bates of the Psycho series of films. Both characters start out as protagonists of their respective films, both wind up battling off-camera antagonists, both eventually find out that they themselves are the antagonists, and both eventually succumb to their psychotic counterparts.
  • The final twist is extremely similar to the one at the end of the film Secret Window, where the protagonist is battling against a threatening and murdering entity only to discover at the end that he was the murderer the whole time, at that point he gives into his second personality and becomes the antagonist for the final scenes.
  • At the dinner scene where Emily is presented books, the top book is Charlotte's Web. Dakota Fanning would play Fern Arable, the main human character, in the live-action adaptation of the story in 2006.

[edit] External links


Preceded by
Are We There Yet?		 Box office number-one films of 2005 (USA)
January 30, 2005		 Succeeded by
Boogeyman