Hide and Seek

Watched this movie a couple of times, and just thought I'd like to share it with my ratings:

Plot summary

Following his discovery of the body of his wife in a bathtub after her suicide, Dr. David Callaway (Robert De Niro), a psychologist working in New York City, decides to move with his daughter Emily (Dakota Fanning) to upstate New York. There, Emily makes an apparently imaginary friend she calls "Charlie". Her friendship with Charlie begins to disturb David when he discovers their cat dead in the bathtub, a victim of "Charlie". Meanwhile, David suffers from nightmares of the New Year's Eve party that occurred the night before his wife (Amy Irving) died.

When a family friend, Katherine (Famke Janssen), comes to visit David and Emily, Emily reveals that she and Charlie have a mutual desire to upset her father. Soon, they meet a man and a woman who are their neighbors. David is wary of their unusual interest in Emily. He later discovers that the reason for this is that the couple had a daughter who recently died from cancer and looks like Emily. Later, when David visits the woman, she nervously and ambiguously implies that her husband has begun abusing her in response to their child's death, emotionally and perhaps even physically.

David meets local woman Elizabeth (Elisabeth Shue) and her niece, Amy, who is roughly the same age as Emily. Hoping to cultivate a new, healthy friendship for Emily, David sets up a playdate for her. Amy is anxious to become friends immediately, but the playdate is spoiled when Emily cuts up Amy's doll's face. After Amy runs out of the house, Emily tells David that she doesn't need any more friends.

Despite the unsuccessful playdate, David and Elizabeth hit it off. David invites her over to dinner one night, where Emily acts increasingly hostile towards her. Some time later, Elizabeth visits the house, hoping to make peace with Emily. When Emily tells her that she is playing hide-and-seek with Charlie, Elizabeth indulges her by pretending to look for Charlie. When she opens the closet, someone bursts out and pushes Elizabeth out a second-story window to her death. After the police discover her car crashed near David's house, David asks Emily what happened. Emily claims Charlie caused her death and then tells David the location of her body. A terrified David discovers Elizabeth's body in a bathtub full of blood. David asks Emily where Charlie is, and Emily tells him that Charlie has "just left" the house.

David, armed with a knife, goes outside, where he meets the neighbor who has become friends with Emily. David assumes that his neighbor is Charlie and begins to act aggressively. Becoming suspicious that David has killed his own daughter, the neighbor asks to see Emily, but David cuts the neighbor with his knife. The neighbor then calls the police.

Back in the house, David finds that, although he has been in his study many times (listening to his stereo and writing a journal), the boxes were actually never unpacked. With this, David realizes that he has split personality and that Charlie is not imaginary at all, but that in fact Charlie is David himself. Whenever it appeared David was in his study, Charlie was actually in control. David also realizes that under his Charlie personality, he killed his wife and then made it appear to be a suicide. He also fully recalls the events of the New Year's Eve party the night before his wife's death. Immediately after the countdown to midnight, David noticed his wife slip away. He followed her and caught her having sex in a stairwell with another guest. Charlie was created as a way for David's rage to destroy his wife, something that David himself was too decent to do.

Once Charlie's identity and horrible deeds are realized, he completely consumes David's entire personality, leading him to murder the local sheriff (Dylan Baker), who came to investigate the previous altercation. Emily calls Katherine for help.

Katherine arrives and is pushed in the basement by Charlie. David (Charlie), determined to play a hideous game of hide-and-seek, starts counting; Emily dashes and hides. She tricks Charlie and manages to lock herself in her room. As Charlie tries to break in, she climbs out from the window and runs into the cave where she originally met Charlie. Meanwhile, Katherine takes the gun from the dead sheriff, breaks out of the basement, and finds Charlie looking for Emily in the cave. Charlie pretends to be David and attacks Katherine when she lowers her guard. Emily emerges from her hiding place, begging Charlie to let Katherine go; her distraction allows Katherine to shoot Charlie, killing him.

Sometime later, Emily is preparing for school in her new life with Katherine. But Emily's drawing of herself with Katherine has two heads, suggesting that she now also suffers from split personality.

Apparently this movie has quite a number of alternate endings, which can be shown below:

Endings

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

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

• Ending #1: The same as the ending in the US theatre release, except that the drawing Emily makes of herself has only one head, suggesting that she is fine and does not suffer from the same disease that resulted in the death of both her parents.

• Ending #2 (this is the ending in the International theatrical version): 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.

• Ending #3: Same as above in the psychiatric ward. After Katherine shuts the door, Emily gets out of bed and does a Hide and Seek countdown. She nears the closet, opens, and smiles at her own reflection in the mirror.

• Ending #4: An ending similar to that in the psychiatric ward, but in this ending Emily is not in a ward but her new home, again playing Hide and Seek with her own reflection.

An additional scene that was planned, but never filmed, involved David briefly regaining control of his body as he laid dying of his gunshot wound and embracing Emily as he died. The producers said it would have been a chance for David and Emily to finally reconcile, following their troubled relationship throughout the film.

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, implying that she suffers from split personality.

It's a pretty cool movie and a surprisingly good twist to the end. I have watch 2 of the 5 endings that existed, which is the official theatrical ending and the #2 alternate ending. Both endings were OK, though the alternate ending seemed to be a more predictable outcome rather than the official ending somehow. I actually kinda liked the alternate ending than the official.

Rating: 8.5/10