HIDEAWAY
A film review by Scott Renshaw
Copyright 1995 Scott Renshaw
Starring: Jeff Goldblum, Christine Lahti, Jeremy Sisto, Alicia Silverstone, Alfred Molina. Screenplay: Andrew Kevin Walker and Neal Jimenez Director: Brett Leonard.
Thriller-cum-horror films tend to come in two basic flavors. On one end you've got your high-school audience slasher film, one of those infinitely sequeled flicks based on a charismatic killer named Freddy or Chuckie or Pinhead; on the other end is your moody, upscale thriller, something that genuinely tries to be creepy and doesn't depend entirely on bursts of music or a cat leaping out at someone. There are about ten times as many of the former as the latter, and as a result I limit the films in the genre that I choose to see to those I have some moderate hope for. HIDEAWAY could have been one of the rare quality efforts, but instead of being ambitious, it's mostly just pretentious and gimmicky, and pretty dull besides.
HIDEAWAY stars Jeff Goldblum as Hatch Harrison, a man returning from a vacation with his wife Lindsey (Christine Lahti) and daughter Regina (Alicia Silverstone) when the family car is hit by a truck and sent over an embankment. Lindsey and Regina survive, but Hatch seems lost, until a doctor (Alfred Molina) uses an experimental technique to bring him back from clinical death. Naturally, there are a few side effects: headaches, trouble sleeping and an unsettling tendency to see visions of murders. Soon Hatch begins to believe that he has become psychically connected to a young killer who calls himself Vassago (Jeremy Sisto), and who appears to want to make Regina his next victim.
Based on the novel by Dean Koontz, HIDEAWAY has some fairly promising psychological material at its core. We learn that the Harrisons recently lost another daughter in a hit-and-run accident, an accident for which Hatch feels he is partly to blame, leading Lindsey to conclude that Hatch's "visions" of Regina in danger are a manifestation of is need to redeem himself by saving his other daughter. There are also some potentially intriguing sexual dynamics involved in Hatch's psychic voyeurism of his daughter being seduced by Vassago. These issues could have been utilized to make HIDEAWAY something more than standard issue supernatural horror fare, but director Brett Leonard refuses to let character matter. While not nearly as techno-happy as he was in his previous film THE LAWNMOWER MAN, Leonard still makes HIDEAWAY too much about filtered shots (used to simulate Hatch's visions) and some absurd computer- generated visions of the afterlife.
At least the computer tricks are moderately interesting to look at. HIDEAWAY is mostly a big fat bore, full of performances which could politely be called somnabulistic. Jeff Goldblum takes his halting, shifty-eyed, big-hand-gesture delivery and transforms himself into...Jeff Goldblum. It often appears as though in between takes he was watching his own performance in THE FLY and wondering, "How did I do that?" Christine Lahti is solid as his wife, limited mostly to looks of fear and worry, but she is convincing at both; Alicia Silverstone, on the other hand, is just another nymphet in a mini-skirt. It is Jeremy Sisto who really deserves our pity, though. His teen psycho could have been fascinating and even sympathetic, but he is turned into a tiresome heavy-metal-listenin', sunglasses-at-night-wearin', virgin-sacrificin', black-candle-lightin', devil-worshippin' plot device. Satanists everywhere should protest that this guy is ruining their image.
HIDEAWAY completely implodes with a preposterous climax which reduces the eternal battle between good and evil to a cool psychedelic light show, with a life-affirming vision from beyond thrown in for good measure. It is, however, merely the logical culmination of an incompetent directing job which can't even seem to do cliches right. HIDEAWAY is a good idea for a thriller; if only it had been scary. Or different. Or *something*.
On the Renshaw scale of 0 to 10 near-death experiences: 3.
-- Scott Renshaw Stanford University Office of the General Counsel
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