This psychological thriller has really good acting, fair direction, and a lousy script.

After his wife’s apparent bathtub suicide, psychiatrist David Calaway decides to move his daughter, Emily, away from the big city to a small town in upstate New York.  But when Emily meets a new imaginary friend named Charlie, David becomes worried despite assurances from his colleague Katherine, back in the city.

David also continues to blame himself for his wife’s death, and he worries that his daughter does as well; especially after learning that Charlie blames him.

As strange writings and a dead cat turn up in the bathroom of their new house, Emily always points the cause to Charlie.  These events increase as David gets closer to a girl named Elizabeth, who’s just gone through a divorce.

The film continues on with minor scares, thrills and gore, before coming to the killing spree climax.

The direction of this film is at best mediocre.  Director John Polson (Swimfan) weaves you in finely into a standard thriller complex by providing you with misleading scares and thrills, with a bit of gore mixed in for good measure.  But by the end, you really are just sitting in your seat still waiting for it to end.

Robert De Niro (City by the Sea, Casino), revered by many as a first-rate actor does actually do a superb job in his role of David Calaway, especially with his character’s twist at the end.

Newcomer Dakota Fanning (Taken miniseries) does quite the good job herself, especially in being able to portray the wide range of emotions her character called for.  In fact she almost overdid it, without leaving any room for subtlty.

Famke Janssen (X-Men) was all right if not a little under-played (or perhaps that was the writing) as Katherine, given her part in the climax of the film.

There’s not too much to say about Elizabeth Shue’s (Leaving Las Vegas) part as Elizabeth.  Her character ended up being just the new love interest for the dad after his wife’s death.  And just when you thought her character was actually going to do something worthwhile for the film, she got pushed out a window.

This leads me to Ari Schlossberg’s (Lucky 13) script for this film.  Schlossberg has written here a highly disturbing script.  His obvious desire with the script was to give his audience an ending that could rival The Sixth Sense.  However the rest of his script is so bad, that it just doesn’t work.  Many parts of the script are disjointed and just don’t really work.  And I’m sorry if this spoils the movie for people, but wouldn’t De Niro’s character after spending more than half the movie trying to find and fight Emily’s imaginary friend Charlie, upon finally learning his true identity, would he not continue to fight him from a mental base; he is after a psychiatrist.

This film is good for a few thrills in the darkness of the movie theatre, but apart from that, if it’s actually the type of movie you’d watch, wait for the DVD rental.