Hideaway

Starring: Jeff Goldblum, Christine Lahti, Alicia Silverstone, Jeremy Sisto, Alfred Molina, Rae Dawn Chong, Kenneth Welsh
Directed by: Brett Leonard
Rating: R
Genre: Horror, Thriller
1995

Times Seen:
Tim: 1

Summary: A man (Jeff Goldblum) dies in an accident and is later revived. When he awakens, he begins having visions of murderer. He begins to question his sanity, or if he is somehow connected to the killer through his near-death experience.

Review:

Tim: I felt some excitement about sitting down to watch Hideaway. I never watched it until 2020, and I like Jeff Goldblum and Alicia Silverstone. I'm also intrigued by movies about near death experiences and I like a good supernatural horror movie. So many worthwhile components were in place. Unfortunately, the movie is terrible. It's one of the worst movies I've seen in a long time. I tried hard to look at it through the lens of 25 years ago (which I'm usually quite good at doing). Even trying to do that, this movie is bad.

The idea is certainly good- a man dies in an accident and is brought back to life. He begins suffering visions or hallucinations, of an evil and potentially demonic nature. That is all interesting and should hold our attention. The problem is the execution. This is simply a poorly made film. The movie comes across as lackluster in nearly every sense. It's like it plows forward, hitting all the points, but there's no other motivation than to get to the end of the story and be done with it. I didn't see any of kind of care or interest in the events on screen. It's a movie that feels like it's only goal is to eventually end. Sadly, for the audience, that became my only goal, too. When is this movie going to be over?

The biggest problem isn't the idea, it's the execution. We never get any real connection with the characters. There's not enough space to allow that connection to happen. I really like Jeff Goldblum, but my biggest memory of him in this film is him saying something to his wife and running out the door. That happens multiple times. There's simply no focus on the characters with any level of depth. It's all just surface level.

As I said, I like Goldblum a great deal. He's one of the reasons I watched this film in the first place. He doesn't give a great performance- I guess some of that is him, but it feels like the direction just wasn't there. There's not much he could do within the context of this film. That extends to the rest of the cast, which is surprisingly good on paper. Sadly, none of them seem very good here. Alicia Silverstone is a solid actress, but she made so little impact here. She was on screen, but her character was nothing more than a "damsel in distress". Jeremy Sisto was fine, but so often too over-the-top. He needed more restraint in his performance. I really like Alfred Molina and he came across as mostly effective in this role. Christine Lahti was forgettable outside of her nagging. I was so glad to see Rae Dawn Chong, but she didn't get to do much at all.Really, this movie didn't do the cast any favors at all.

What bothered me the most was that this movie just felt so boring. I didn't care about the characters. I didn't fully understand how all the supernatural things were supposed to work. This made a relatively short movie feel so much longer. There's a few interesting twists in the story, but without a compelling reason for us to care, the impact of them are blunted. The visual effects were decent for 1995. There's some impressive visuals at the conclusion, but it's almost too late.

I really disliked Hideaway. The characters were underdeveloped. The movie's pace was frenetic, not allowing time for anyone to breath or things to fully develop. This is just a bad movie from beginning to end. Watching it was torturous and I struggled to stay focused. There's nothing to see here, other than a bunch of good actors caught in a bad film.

Rating 1-10
Tim's Rating: 3.5



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