29th October 2018 | 31 Days of “Alternative” Horror: Hide and Seek
Robert De Niro doesn’t really need any weapons for props. He doesn’t need a room, setting or location. He doesn’t even need a cast to play off. De Niro needs only his performance to make any character he embodies dangerous, malevolent, or even crazy. Now, saying that, De Niro doesn’t often make movies that are straight-laced horror. De Niro is hardly upstaged by paranormal, supernatural, aliens or satanic maniacs. He doesn’t get lost in the woods, become possessed by evil, nor is he ever afraid of the dark.
To say those things are external elements deeply underestimates De Niro’s power on the big screen. He would never battle against them. He “becomes” them instead. Is that too broad a claim? De Niro existed at his darkest in Angel Heart, Cape Fear, Frankenstein, Godsend, Hide and Seek, and Red Lights — most of which are thriller first, horror at the whim of whatever De Niro brought to the table. He just can’t be restrained. Out of all these movies, I chose the one that had him at his most vulnerable, or at least out played by the horror tropes we come to recognise.
Well, he’s no Chuck Norris, but here we go…
Hide and Seek has a main theme reminiscent of Rosemary’s Baby and The Innocents. The theme plays into the premise of a childhood trauma, in this case, the suicide of a mother, Allison Callaway, played by Amy Irving. Young Emily Callaway, played by Dakota Fanning, witnesses the aftermath as her father, David Callaway, played by De Niro, discovers Allison’s body in the bathtub. Dakota Fanning puts up a performance to match De Niro’s — as the disturbed girl with a dark secret. Her weapon is an imaginary friend called Charlie. Her father is a psychiatrist and at first uses the idea of “the imaginary” Charlie as a device to get Emily to talk through her thoughts and feelings, but soon enough, it becomes apparent that Emily is playing a game. She is ready to confront her suspicions: That her father is responsible for letting her mother die. He didn’t do enough to save her life.
Emily’s game (or is it her imaginary friend, Charlie…) is carefully constructed, filled with nuance, which makes me wonder: why was this movie was treated poorly by critics? The bathtub is heavily relied on to deliver the suspense reveal, over and over again, but then, isn’t that the point? To keep bringing the husband back to the scene of the crime, over and over, repeat and repeat.
Dakota Fanning pulled off a truly magnificent performance at the tender age of 11. Robert De Niro is often cited as being a method actor, requiring the utmost motivation to do whatever it is his character desires. There is a moment after he finds an animal dead in his bathtub that upon confronting Emily, she heads towards him, and De Niro takes a step back, in shock, fuelled with fear.
Director John Polson is yet another director with a short filmography, with two films, Swimfan and Hide and Seek as the two most prominent. Polson is the founder of Tropfest, the largest short film festival in the world, in partnership with De Niro’s Tribeca. So it begs to speculate whether Hide and Seek was nothing more than a business deal, and perhaps De Niro’s acting method wasn’t entirely switched on. The movie does make a huge nod to one of De Niro’s earlier classics: Cape Fear’s immortal phrase “Come out, Come out, wherever you are.” Although spoken by Dakota.
It might not be a classic, but to see a beloved immortal being put in his place is something worth watching.
Written by: Stephen Radford
website: stephenradford.com
Next: 30th October: Ghostwatch
