"Hide and Seek" is a 2013 Korean thriller that tells the story of Sung-soo, a successful business and family man who lives in luxury in Seoul with his wife and kids. When he receives a call that states that his estranged brother is missing, his search for his brother endangers his entire family.
The film employs many tropes of the horror genre to varying degrees of success. These include jump scares, a non-existent police force, and a killer who seems to teleport to wherever will provide the biggest scare. The most offensive of these are the incompetent victims, who go out of their way to make the killer's job easier. Early in the film, a woman is convinced that her neighbor is trying to kill her, so she wanders the halls of her building, leaving her front door wide open as she does. Predictable things happen next. Characters also seem to escape certain death for no other reason than the fact that they are important to the story, which is not unique by any means but handled rather poorly here.
Added to this our protagonist, Sung-soo, is a mixed bag of cliches. He suffers hallucinations, OCD, and medication to control these that he sometimes forgets to take. His ailments lead to some tense scenes, but they don't add anything to the story other than that. His backstory is similarly useless, explaining the rift between him and his brother but nothing else.
The tropes are well used in some parts, creating an effectively tense and spooky atmosphere. Included in this is what seems to be an attempt at a murder mystery, which is strange, given that we know who the killer supposedly is. Red herrings abound, adding to tension and setting the stage for a big reveal, but also mostly lead nowhere and add nothing else to the story.
The reveal comes in the form of a big twist in the middle of act two. A chance encounter is revealed to be much more and reshapes much of what came before. Seeing some of the previous scenes in a new light uplifts them, but the film soon returns to tired cliches. The film is worth a watch for the tense scenes, which are well done, and if you are able to ignore the holes in the story and the cliffhanger ending you can see coming miles away.
