5.5 | / 10 |
Users | 4.2 | |
Reviewer | 2.5 | |
Overall | 3.2 |
As a widower tries to piece together his life in the wake of his wife's suicide, his daughter finds solace -- at first -- in her imaginary friend.
Starring: Dakota Fanning, Robert De Niro, Famke Janssen, Amy Irving, Melissa LeoHorror | 100% |
Thriller | 56% |
Drama | Insignificant |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 2.40:1
Original aspect ratio: 2.39:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 (48kHz, 24-bit)
French: DTS 5.1 (48kHz, 24-bit)
Spanish: DTS 5.1 (48kHz, 24-bit)
Spanish: Dolby Digital 5.1 (448 kbps)
Portuguese: Dolby Digital 5.1
German: DTS 5.1
Italian: DTS 5.1
Russian: Dolby Digital 5.1
Czech: Dolby Digital 5.1
Hungarian: Dolby Digital 5.1 (448 kbps)
Polish: Dolby Digital 5.1
Turkish: Dolby Digital 5.1
Thai: Dolby Digital 5.1
Spanish DTS 5.1 = Spain dub
English SDH, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, Arabic, Cantonese, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Korean, Mandarin (Traditional), Norwegian, Polish, Russian, Thai, Turkish
50GB Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Region free
Movie | 1.0 | |
Video | 4.0 | |
Audio | 4.0 | |
Extras | 2.5 | |
Overall | 2.5 |
Good thrillers should be rewatchable even after you've learned their secrets. Both The Usual Suspects and The Sixth Sense remain terrific entertainments, regardless of whether you know all about Keyser Söze or understand why little Cole Sear sees dead people. But what can you say about a would-be thriller that, even on a first viewing, telegraphs its big reveals, underlines its red herrings, and tries to disguise the bad odor by slathering on a thick layer of atmosphere, like spicy sauce on a cheap cut of meat? The first time I saw the film, I couldn't fathom how anyone had attracted such a five-star cast to such a threadbare script. But the extras on this disc make it clear that Robert De Niro was one of the first to be attached, and everyone wants to work with De Niro. So along came Melissa Leo (now herself an Oscar winner), Amy Irving, Famke Janssen, Elisabeth Shue, Dylan Baker and wunderkind Dakota Fanning, who was only nine years old when filming began. With talent of that calibre, a master director like Martin Scorsese might have cooked up a pulpy masterpiece of self-reference gone made like Shutter Island. But Hide and Seek got handed to actor-turned-director John Polson (he was Tom Cruise's supply man in the second Mission Impossible), and while Polson is capable, he's no Scorsese. Still, exploitation cinema has always been reliably profitable. The image of a hollow-eyed, terrified and possibly demonic Fanning, combined with the tagline "Come out, come out, wherever you are" (evoking an earlier and iconic role by De Niro), propelled Hide and Seek to a modestly successful domestic box office and even greater international sales. And now Fox has inflicted the film on us again, this time on Blu-ray.
The cinematographer for Hide and Seek was Dariusz Wolski, who was an interesting choice, because his specialty is fantastical landscapes of all varieties, from The Crow and Dark City for Alex Proyas, to the four Pirates of the Caribbean films for Bruckheimer & Co., to Sweeney Todd and Alice in Wonderland for Tim Burton. In Hide and Seek, Wolski is photographing real places and people, but at angles that are slightly off and with lighting and focal lengths that lend just enough unease to the scene so that the viewer is never comfortable. Whatever problems may exist in the script, Wolski's work cannot be faulted. Despite the film's being made in 2005, there are no credits for a digital intermediate. Nevertheless, the 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray reflects the same level of quality that one would expect from a fine-grained, well-preserved, recent negative or interpositive, scanned and color-corrected with the latest technology. The image is finely detailed, revealing visual minutia of clothing, leaves, branches and facial expressions. Black levels are also impressive, allowing detail in shadow areas to show through, while black areas of the frame (which occur regularly) remain opaque. Bright colors are rare in the world of Hide and Seek, which is dominated by earth tones and a generally somber palette, but the naturalness of fleshtones confirms the transfer's accuracy (except, of course, for Dakota Fanning, who is supposed to look funereal). I did not see any compression, DNR or other filtering artifacts, and the only element that kept this transfer from a perfect score was a slight but occasional aliasing or shimmer in a few shots, usually involving dense forest.
The DTS lossless 5.1 mix makes restrained but effective use of the surrounds to convey the country environment, with birds and other woodland sounds gently placed to the rear as a reminder of the natural ambiance but without unduly calling attention to themselves. In more active and aggressive scenes (and I don't want to get more specific than that), the surrounds tend to be used in concert with the fronts to create a seamless environment of sound that spreads outward to immerse the listener. Bass extension is powerful where it needs to be, but this is not a track for showing off the subwoofer. Dialogue remains clear and generally centered, but John Ottman's score has been cleverly folded into the mix so that portions of it seem to remain in front while others seem to surround you -- a sensation that adds to the general mood of unease.
It's not surprising that the filmmakers struggled with the ending of Hide and Seek. A film whose entire action depends on traumatizing a child -- graphically, multiple times, in excruciating detail rendered by one of the most talented child actors in recent memory -- requires some very fancy dancing before the perpetrators take their bow. If you listen to the commentary accompanying the various alternate endings, it's clear they understood the need to acknowledge the seriousness of the subject without sending everyone home depressed. I have no problem with stories that show bad things happening to children; fairy tales and myths have done that for centuries, but they did so as part of a genuine effort to make sense of the world and its hazards. Hide and Seek isn't interested in such endeavors. It puts Emily through the wringer for the sole purpose of giving an audience a thrill. (And lest anyone think I'm exaggerating, director Polson is explicit in his commentary that the cause of Emily's suffering should not be explained.) We all have a personal list of elements in film that make us queasy. Badly constructed narrative is my number one offense against good taste. But mistreating kids for kicks runs a close second. For its technical quality, the Blu-ray of Hide and Seek is recommended, if you like that sort of thing. The film itself is most definitely not recommended.
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