"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?

Academy Award winner 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, traumatizing Emily. Father and daughter move to Upstate New York to distance Emily from the memories of her life in Manhattan with her mother. Soon thereafter, Emily 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.