Hide and Seek (2005)

'm quite keen on horror films. Actually it's a bit of a tedious hobby as most of them are so utterly dreadful and not the least bit horrific. It pays off from time to time though, I thought that 'The Blair Witch Project' was a masterpiece, for example.

I, consequently, had extremely low expectations when I went to see 'Hide and Seek' today. Verity, as usual, refused to join me, she sees no point in ersatz fear. www.IMDb.com gives this film a very low rating and it is usually reliable so I expected even less - in fact I only went to see it because there was nothing else on at the time that we happened to be in Cavendish for other reasons.

I was very pleasantly surprised. Robert de Niro is an excellent actor who gives a good performance despite it being such a hackneyed genre. His performance is considerably weaker towards the end, but it doesn't matter much at that stage.

The plot is unusually intelligent with fewer of the 'why be so stupid as to split up when in the haunted house' moments than usual. The characters who are the usual red-herrings are more plausibly drawn than usual and the sets much less spooky - a benefit in plausibility.

The little girl Dakota Fanning (a peculiar name, if ever there was one!) acts well despite the rather confining nature of her character.

The psychological parts of the plot line are indeed rather thin and the aetiology of the bogeyman's pathology not explored at all. Disappointing as this was, it was probably wise as any increase in psychobabble would have been considerably distracting.

The suspense is well presented, it is convincingly scary at times, to me the ultimate test of this genre. The musical score isn't that original, but I didn't think it overplayed.

If you have a penchant for horror flicks, a very minor vice in the scheme of things, I'd recommend this film despite its poor showing on IMDb. I don't think that I was alone in enjoying it, there were some full-blooded shrieks from the audience a number of times and no snigger's.