Going by his last few films, Robert De Niro seems intent on shaking off the label of the world's finest screen actor. In supernatural schlocker Hide And Seek he stars opposite the busiest scamp in showbiz, Dakota Fanning. She's the obligatory creepy kid who sees dead people in this "charmless psycho-thriller" directed by John Polson. It was loathed by critics but De Niro showed fair pulling power at the box office and the film eventually took just over $50m worldwide.
Little Terror
Apparently 11-year-old Dakota Fanning scared the bejeezus out of director John Polson with her spookily advanced intellect. In a perfunctory 'making of' featurette he explains, "Working with her is like working with an incredibly talented 35-year-old." In case you doubt that, Little Miss Fanning is on hand to talk about her impressions on first reading the script, the "great honour" of working with De Niro and the fun she had with co-star Famke Janssen. "Oh, that was fun," she recalls, "I really, really freaked her out, like in real life..." If you ask very nicely, she can also spin her head a full 360 degrees.
"She looks really creepy," says editor Jeffrey Ford, "If she was my daughter, I'd be like 'Oh my god...'" He joins director John Polson and screenwriter Ari Schlossberg to talk about four alternative endings that are only subtly different to the final cut. Basically they are all either "too dark" or not dark enough.
Polson and co also give commentary for another 14 deleted scenes, which sounds very generous, but in practice add very little to the ramshackle story. Among the footage is more father-daughter bonding (fishing, strolling, gazing into the middle-distance with quiet foreboding etc) and Fanning scaling new heights of creepiness by raiding her dead mother's hatbox and plastering on some clownish red lipstick. Stephen King's It anyone?
Exposed
If you think the feature commentary will help plug a few of those annoying gaps in the story, think again. Even screenwriter Ari Schlossberg - who originated the idea - is at a loss to explain what he's written. "It's about dreams and about the sort of other self and about a parallel sort of subconscious world that we are in touch but we're not in touch with" blah, blah, blah... Sadly Polson isn't much help either; "This bit doesn't actually make logical sense," he confesses at one stage, "But I don't think that really matters." If you haven't hit eject by now, this is the time to do it.
Three scene-to-storyboard comparisons complete this sieve-like package. It fails to answer questions raised by the film and Robert De Niro doesn't even have the decency to step up and attempt to explain himself. In the end, the lackadaisical approach of the filmmakers is more terrifying than the film itself.
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