COME out, come out, wherever you are!' That command is familiar to everyone who has played the children's game, hide and seek.

The words and game take us back to an innocent, carefree time in our lives, where the simple goal was to find hiding playmates. Many children could even enjoy a spirited game with imaginary friends. But then, imaginary friends can sometimes seem so real For young Emily Callaway, her games of hide and seek with an imaginary friend named Charlie have become anything but simple and innocent. Instead, she finds herself in the middle of a series of increasingly nightmarish acts that even her father David cannot stop. Who or what is Charlie, David wonders.

How can an imaginary' entity have this kind of hold on her? Maybe Charlie is not imaginary at all, but instead a flesh-and-blood, malevolent presence?

Robert De Niro stars as David Callaway, a troubled father and widower in the suspense-thriller Hide And Seek, and Dakota Fanning portrays his young daughter Emily, who is hiding an incredible secret.

As the story opens, Callaway's wife Alison (Amy Irving) dies suddenly, traumatising Emily. Father and daughter move to uptown New York to distance Emily from the memories of her life in Manhattan with her mother.

Emily then develops a friendship with Charlie. At first, David sees Charlie as a positive way for Emily to express herself, but a series of terrifying acts lead him to imagine the unimaginable: Charlie may actually be real and if so, he must be stopped. "I wanted to write a really scary movie," says first-time screenwriter Ari Schlossberg of his work on Hide And Seek. "I grew up in New York City, and the woods always held an element of fear for me. So of course I set my story in a rural woodsy town."

Portraying the anxious father gave Robert De Niro the chance of a new kind of role for the actor. "We haven't seen Bob play a father holding things together while his family's falling apart. It's a new kind of vulnerability for him to play, and it was exciting to watch him show us a different side," says director John Polson.

To play the troubled youngster Emily, the blond-haired Dakota Fanning donned a brown wig and applied under-eye makeup, which gave the young actress a haunted appearance. But the wig, as effective as it is, only serves to help the actress tap into something new for her.

"This role is like nothing I've done before," says Fanning. "First of all, I look a lot different. But that's only the beginning. Emily is definitely scared and in some sort of trouble, but she keeps you guessing about who or what is really causing these scary things to happen."

A new woman in David's life is Elizabeth, who is recently divorced and looking for a new direction for her life. Elizabeth welcomes David and Emily to their new home, and she and David become close friends. When the friendship takes a romantic turn, Elizabeth finds herself targeted by someone or something. "But is it Charlie, Emily, or someone we're not yet aware of?" asks Elisabeth Shue, who portrays Elizabeth. "That's one of the film's key mysteries."