R for violence, profanity, themes about Satanism, and one brief scene of sexuality...oh yeah and some steamy shower scenes!!!
Other Titles: DIE VERSTECKSPIEL (German for THE HIDEAWAY); PREMONIZIONI (Italian for PREMONITION); SOUVENIRS DE L'AU-DELA (French for MEMORIES FROM BEYOND); KRYJOWKA DIABLA (Polish for ??? DEVIL); ASESINO DEL MAS ALLA (Spanish for THE KILLER FROM BEYOND or THE ASSASIN FROM BEYOND); REINO DE LAS TINIEBLAS (Alternate Spanish title (Argentina)translation: KINGDOM OF DARKNESS); ELEMENTAL EVIL (Chinese/Mandarin); DODBRINGENDE KONTAKT (Denmark); GOMSTALLET (Sweden); SKJULESTEDET (Norway); O ESCONDERIJO (Portugues for HIDEAWAY, Brazil)
Happy Hollerween everyone!!! I would like to celebrate All Hallow's Eve by creating a page for, and doing a review of, one of the most memorable Jeremy Sisto movies we've ever had fun watching: Hideaway!!! Every year around Halloween, one of my favorite holidays, I try to be in the right mood to watch Hideaway, and this year was a success. I popped it into my VCR and watched it on the 23rd, and I'm happy to report it was just as much fun as ever!!!
Back in 1997, I read the book by Dean Koontz a few months before renting the film because I had already fallen mad for Jeremy and his work, but Hideaway presented a premise which frightened me, boy is evil, boy worships the devil, boy goes on killing rampage...so I was kind of scared to rent it at first. But so many people recommended it to any Jeremy fan that I just couldn't resist the urge!!!
Hideaway (the book) is the story of a 17 year old who, by some coincidence of fate, seems to be missing normal human feelings of compassion, love, scruples, decency, whose father realizes it because his own father was a homicidal maniac. Somehow the tragic trait skipped a generation in the Nyebern family; Jonas, a cardiac surgeon, is the lucky one...if you count not becoming a murderer lucky; he lives with the memory of watching his own father slaughter his mother and his siblings. Having grown up and married, he is horrified to notice that his son Jeremy is displaying the same traits as Grandpa had. The book is wonderful, a one of a kind story by a writer heralded as a master horror story teller, discussing things like physical changes that happen to the body after death, the possibility that there is a heaven and a hell, and above all, the controversial theory that perhaps evil is an inherent personality type, passed from generation to generation.
The 17 year old Jeremy gets into Satanism and reads as much as he can about it and then decides he doesn't want to live anymore. He wants to die and go to hell to be with Satan, so he stabs himself to death, but not before he kills his mother and sister as sacraficial offerings to his god.
The movie depicts the physical scenes well (I loved the song by KFDFM and the EVIL-LOOKIN' black candles!!!)but doesn't really touch on the whys and wherefores, which still disappoints me, because to have discussed Jeremy's grandfather would have shed some light onto the situation. Jeremy's evil wouldn't have been given a reason that was environmental...bad upbringing, bad influence, hanging with the wrong boys at school, etc. but rather, a reason that is purely physical, evil from bad genetic sequencing.
Back to the book for a while...Jeremy's attempt to leave earth and relocate into hell is thwarted by his father. Unable to bear losing a third member of his family, Jonas resussitates Jeremy and puts him in a nursing home. In a coma for months, living on parenteral and tube feedings, Jeremy comes to and slowly recovers. Hoping the boy is too brain damaged to resume his evil traits, the father leaves him in the nursing home. Jeremy has not been brain damaged however, and after fooling everyone with the facade of a vegetable, he vanishes and Jonas hires a detective to try to find him. Jeremy makes his home in an amusement park that was destroyed by a fire, rejects his Christian name in favor of the name Vassago, from an evil prince said to be one of Satan's best henchmen, and aspires to "earn" his way into hell by killing only the most vibrant, happy, prolific women he can find.
Keep in mind I am not in any way bashing this movie because in spite of the fact that the book is much more in depth, the movie is just something that I cannot hate, dislike, trash, bash or throw out. I love it way too much!!! It's just that whenever I compare the book with the movie, I talk so much about how great the story in the book is that it seems like I hate the movie, but honestly I don't. It's almost as if you just can't compare the two because they both have their outstanding points. I for one think Jeremy Sisto is the most outstanding point of the movie, and it could very well be that sometimes I like Jeremy Sisto, his acting, what he brings to a role/character, more than I like the film itself.
Aside from Jeremy, the cast seems to be a bit bland...Jeff Goldblum always seems to play a very smart guy who looks dazed, and here, playing the central protagonist, the "good" guy, Hatch Harrison, husband, father and antique store owner, he is just as smart and just as dazed as ever. What's missing is a sense of wry humor that he is really great at, but one wonders if this would have fit, being Hatch is a man whose younger daughter was recently hit by a car and killed. Christine Lahti is a great dramatic actress and her character Lindsey, the wife and mother, is played very well, all seriousness and parental concern. Alicia Silverstone plays Regina, the only remaining daughter to the Harrisons, and for the most part her performance is annoying, whiney and pouty, but her scene with Vassago in the nightclub was pretty convincing...more about that in a moment.
The movie begins and proceeds thus: Hatch, Lindsey and Regina, still devastated by the loss of Samantha a year earlier, escape to the mountains to a log cabin and eat hamburgers, but on the way back, they meet head on with a diesel truck and end up in an icy creek. Hatch dies of hypothermia and is rushed to a hospital, where a cardiac surgeon who founded a "special resussitation regimen" miraculously revives him. His family, shocked but thankful, take him home and they begin life anew. Not long after, however, Hatch begins to have terrible hallucinations and nightmarish visions. He sees himself slashing the throats of pretty blonde girls and is almost totally convinced that somehow he's become a murderer. Lindsey watches Hatch slowly losing his mind and begins to think he has a brain tumor. Regina, meantime, is angry that her dad is even more paranoid about her going out at night than he was "before" he died, so she sneaks out at night, having altered her driver's license, and goes to nightclubs. In one dimly lit club filled with creepy industrial music (the song "Nihil" by Godflesh is just one of many on the ass-kicking soundtrack), a guy catches the eyes of Regina and her friends. He approaches Regina and everything about him is danger, which she finds very appealing of course. He wears a black trenchcoat and fingerless gloves, his hair is dark and wildly uncombed, his face is beautiful, all big black eyes, shapely lips and ghostly white skin, and do I even have to elaborate on his VOICE???!!! Regina came this close to being seduced by his eyes, voice and gently stroking fingertips...oof!!! Good thing those friends of hers were there!!! Not a good thing for Zoey!!! LOL!!! I still get a kick out of how he stole her bone necklace. Reminds me of "The Bad Seed" where the girl kept killing people because she wanted the cool things they had!!!
After meeting Regina, Vassago is completely obsessed with the idea of adding her to his collection of victims in his "hideaway" at the amusement park, a lair made up of welded metal shaped to look like a demonic head with jagged teeth, and stinking with the smell of rotting flesh, the bodies of the people he has killed.
Hatch, in turn, has become completely obsessed with finding out why he is seeing through the eyes of a serial killer, and with catching the killer and stopping him. While Vassago is trying to find out the Harrisons' address (the scene in the antique shop with that British lady is probably the most hilarious scene in the movie, which prooves beyond a doubt that Jeremy has a way with deadpan comedy), Hatch has a tarot reading done and when the reader (Rae Dawn Chong) is killed by Vassago, Hatch grabs his shotgun and chases Vassago with more determination than ever. Here you may have to stop and rewind a few times the very watchable shower scenes in which Vassago admires a victim's blood smeared on his chest and giggles to himself as he relishes visions of a very frustrated and angry Hatch. The blood doesn't seem to bother any of us squeamish girlies, we're too busy feasting our eyes on that hot little body and wondering who came up with the idea of this scene and wishing we could write this person a letter of eternal gratitude...
Once you're finished with your cold shower, the story continues...Vassago, having finally acquired Regina, makes for the hideaway, with Hatch in hot pursuit, for a final showdown. The special effects have been criticized by many, and by today's standards (a whole seven years later) they do seem a bit cheesy (overused word), but the action during the fight scenes is pretty intense. There are two endings, one before, and one after, the closing credits role. Both are terrific, but I like the ending after the credits better.
Read the book, see the movie. They're BOTH excellent. Pant, pant, I'm tired!!!
The Cast
Jeff Goldblum as HATCH HARRISON
Christine Lahti as LINDSEY HARRISON
Alfred Molina as JONAS NYEBERN
Jeremy Sisto as VASSAGO
Alicia Silverstone as REGINA HARRISON
Rae Dawn Chong as ROSE ORWETTO
Review by Mari Weir Oct. 2002
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