After her mother commits suicide, a young girl begins telling her father of her new friend, Charlie. But when “Charlie” begins acting out, it becomes apparent that he may not be imaginary. Based on the childhood game of the same name. (Which when I played it, rarely included themes of suicide, at least to my recollection.)

I’ve noticed somewhat of a trend of late. Hollywood films with a great premise that fall completely flat. This is due to the fact that so many screenwriters have no idea what to do with the set-up they’ve created. The intriguing plot of ‘The Forgotten’ turned into a lame sci-fi flick in the second act, and the less said about ‘Gothika’ the better.

I’m going to keep this short, a film this shallow doesn’t deserve to be discussed at length. (And frankly, I just don’t have much to say about this flop.) This movie manages a rare feat, including two lame hack contrivances from my personal pet peeves list.

• It orphans a child for plot convenience.
• It kills off a pet just to provide a cheap jump scene.

I might forgive the film if only it made something out of clichés it’s chock full of. But that's just my point. It don’t. The film drags on and on, and on and on…and on. Oh sure there’s the occasional killing, but if that’s all I’ve got to look forward to, I might as well be watching Friday the 13^th part eleventy-blue. The writers of this film are just lazy. They yank hunks of screenplay and characterization from other, better films, and do so without shame. Once the character conflict is set up (“Charlie’s” appearances, which seem connected to Dakota’s Electra-like objection to her father dating) the film tries to build tension by beating you over the head with the same theme ad infinitum.

If it has great actors, a film might manage to be entertaining despite being a collection of lame plot contrivances. While most would recognize Robert De Niro as an excellent actor, his performance here is seriously flat. As anyone who's seen the new 'War of the Worlds' flick can attest, Dakota Fanning excels at being annoying. Playing the stock horror flick character of the creepy kid, she comes across as just being pissy all the damn time. Everyone else is pretty forgettable.

What else to say? Ah yes, there’s the big twist ending. The big twist ending that every film critic in the country said could only have been dreamed up by a dyspeptic monkey and made them want to punch someone!

For once, I find myself in definite agreement with the lame-stream critics.
Not to mention the fact that the ending is a total ripp-off of (spoiler warning, highlight to read)
'The Secret Window'. Odd that they would choose to copy an ending which so many found to be unsatisfying.

I wonder if the filmmakers ever considered a supernatural solution to the proceedings, or would that have been too predictable? (Better to be predictable than asinine.)

I got to see this mess on dvd along with about five or six alternate endings. (All of them dumb.) Why exactly would you film half a dozen variant endings to your film? Maybe because you have no idea what the point of your little story is.