Producer: Yeonu Choi Director: Joel David Moore Screenplay: Joel David Moore Cast: Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Jacinda Barrett, Sue Jean Kim, Mustafa Shakir, Quinn McColgan, Eli Golden, Avril Wei, Alejandra Rivera Flaviá, Michael Godere, Geoffrey Owens, Lindsay Perry, Barbara Rosenblat and Joe Pantoliano Distributor: Saban Films
Grade: C-
At a compact eighty-three minutes, Joel David Moore’s English-language adaptation of Huh Jung’s 2013 Korean thriller is at once too short to be coherent and too long to hold one’s interest for the duration. “Hide and Seek” is not a film to search out.
The protagonist is Noah Blackwell (Jonathan Rhys Meyers), who lives in the penthouse of his Manhattan luxury hotel with beautiful wife Samantha (Jacinda Barrett) and their children Hannah (Quinn McColgan) and Max (Eli Golden). They’re wealthy and seem happy, although Noah’s obsession about keeping things (including himself) clean and organized suggests some psychological turmoil.
Its cause is revealed almost at once in a conversation with columnist Betsy Glasgold (Barbara Rosenblat), who’s preparing a story on the hotel. She pressures him about the fact that his late father had disinherited his brother Jacob and left everything to him. Why, she asks, and could it lead to future problems? Noah doesn’t answer, but is clearly disturbed by the query.
His concern deepens when his lawyer Collin (Joe Pantoliano) informs him that Jacob has returned to New York and is living in a condemned building in a bad area of the city. Collin warns Noah to leave the matter to him, but Noah goes to the run-down place, only to learn from its self-appointed landlord Frankie (Mustafa Shakir) that Jacob has disappeared. He also encounters Soo Mi (Sue Jean Kim), who is hostile as soon as she hears Jacob’s name, believing that he had threatened her precocious young daughter Mi Jin (Avril Wei).
A prologue has already shown us that the building is a dangerous place. In it, a pretty squatter named Gina (Alejandra Rivera Flaviá) was attacked—by a mysterious figure wearing a motorcycle helmet. That figure will show up again, and Noah will assume that it is Jacob, intent on menacing him and his family in retaliation for the loss of his rightful share of the inheritance. Noah clearly feels guilty about what his father had done, apparently because he blamed Jacob for the suicide of his wife
Much of the rest of the film follows Noah as he prowls the dilapidated building in search his brother, provoking attacks from other people living there, who blame Jacob for Gina’s disappearance. And Soo Mi continues to see him as a danger. He is beaten and forced to crawl through the unsavory innards of the crumbling place, as the helmeted figure returns, only to speed away on a motorcycle. Eventually Gina’s body will be discovered and the fearsome killer will show up at Noah’s apartment to threaten Samantha, Hannah and Max.
The solution to the mystery won’t be revealed here, but if you have seen the Korean original, it will come as no surprise, as Moore follows it closely, even down to the casting of Kim and Wei although the characters’ ethnicity could easily have been altered along with that of the others in the film. Suffice it to say that the revelation involves not just the family problems Noah is most frightened by, but a more general chasm between haves and have-nots; the film tries to be a commentary on class conflict as well as a domestic thriller, though the fashion in which that plays out in the final reel reeks of hysteria without being very clear or enlightening. Perhaps the plot would have greater resonance in its original setting on the Korean peninsula.
Meyers is a solid actor, though here he’s not playing much more than a single note, and Barrett, McColgan and Golden are just accessories, though they all handle what’s required of them well enough. Shakir comes on very strong as the imperious super, and both Kim and Wei add touches of oddness to the proceedings, as the script calls for. Pantoliano has what’s pretty much a nothing part, but it’s been beefed up with bits of business for him to play—Collin’s attempt to quit smoking by sucking lollypops, for instance, followed by his wife’s insistence that he lay off sweets because he’s gaining weight. But it’s always nice to encounter the actor even when he’s sadly underused.
Except for the hotel sequences Kaet McAnney’s production design is grim, as the condemned building demands, and Ryan Samul’s cinematography gives the former a bright, sparkly shine and envelops the latter in gloomy, nasty darkness. The editing by Alex Márquez and Josh Ethier is not what anyone would call crisp, and includes some punishingly muddled montages to express Noah’s disorientation as his mental control deteriorates. As usual in low-budget thrillers today, the score—by Tim Jones—is way too insistent, with pulsating highs punctuated by booming growls of foreboding in the lower register.
Moore’s attempt to make “Hide and Seek” both exciting and unsettling doesn’t really come off, and while his effort to include a socio-economic element is intriguing, ultimately it’s carried out in a fashion most viewers will find way over-the-top. To be fair, though, his adaptation is quite faithful to the original. Unfortunately in this case, that might have been a mistake: a bit more tinkering might have been wise.
And he might have excised the coda, which tells us that the threat is not over, indicating that a sequel might be possible. But definitely not probable.