Hide & Seek - Rubbish De Niro in ANOTHER shrink movie

Now for some Unoriginal Trash designed to get the kids in on a Saturday night. Prepare for the worst, reader: there’s no talking Italian going on in this banal shocker featuring Robert De Niro…

A worn-out looking Robert De Niro is a shrink whose wife commits suicide, leaving him and his freaky daughter (Dakota Flanning - seemingly destined to be the new Christina Ricci) to deal with the fallout.

So, as any smart person would do after a tragedy of this kid, De Niro takes his daughter to a huge old house in the middle of nowhere.

Things take a (not-too-surprising) turn for the worse as the daughter starts imagining a friend called Charlie, who gets up to all kinds of naughty business.

Needless to say, daddy De Niro doesn’t believe her. Cue lots of annoyingly cliched build up and suspense.

Every horror film trick has been used once again here - creepy china dolls, spooky music boxes, the cat jumping out of the cupboard… even the weird neighbour and suspicious policeman have been given the treatment with underlying hints of paedophillia.

This wonderfully tedios build-up leads us to the inevitable twist that fell out the bottom of a cereal box and reminded me of Secret Window (another rubbish throw-away thriller). I really wouldn’t bother with this one - wait for the video. In fact wait until it appears on TV, maybe the second time around. Actually… just wait for something better.