This was a pretty nice psychological thriller. The movie was released in 2005, yet I got a really strong 90s vibe from it! Both Dakota Fanning and Robert De Niro did their thing. It’s also great to see some of the older movies from Dakota Fanning. Her career has spanned too long, and it’s amazing to see some of her very early works as a kid.

I think one of the dead giveaways to the plot stemmed from the very quick flashbacks that David experienced in the beginning. I think that this giveaway, along with him waking up exactly at 2:06 AM, which obviously hinted that something was wrong with him, should not have been revealed to the audience until towards the second half of the movie. Well, at least the flashback portions. Other than that, the usual tropes of a creepy kid seeing imaginary friends and not being allowed to talk about them, playing games with said imaginary friend, along with blaming all things that go wrong in the living world on them, but the adults not believing them, are all here.

I was surprised to learn, though, that there were five actual endings to this movie, with slightly different variations to each. The one I saw was the US theatrical version, where it shows Emily’s drawing of herself at the end with two heads. This obviously hints that she’s going to be messed up growing up, but hopefully she’ll get better with the help of Kate. On a side note, Famke Janssen was looking really good in this movie. 😍 Anyway, Wikipedia has a description of the other four endings. Personally, I’d vote for the One Final Game ending to be the creepiest and best out of the bunch. It would show that somehow, David’s mental illness would have passed on to Emily. And of course, we have YouTube to the rescue to show us a couple of these alternate endings. You can’t honestly say Emily’s countdown in the psychiatric ward room isn’t some creepy stuff…🤣

All in all, this was a pretty good mid-2000s psychological horror thriller of a movie. Does Robert De Niro actually age? The guy looks practically identical almost 20 years later! I loved how they also didn’t rely on cheap jump scares and stayed true to what a psychological horror movie should be, in my opinion.