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If you’ve seen any of the ads promoting this film, you’ll have noticed that it resembles Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining (1980). Also, it promises cinema’s current favorite cliché, the "surprise" ending. John Polson, director of 2002’s B-list teen thriller Swimfan, here graduates to an A-list cast, only to drown his actors in C-grade banality; no Kubrick he. Robert De Niro grabs yet another paycheck (after last year’s similar, awful Godsend), playing remarkably misguided psychologist David Callaway, father to Emily (Dakota Fanning, eerily unblinking behind the ever-darkening circles of her eye make-up), who’s traumatized by the recent suicide of her mother (Amy Irving). By uprooting the family from Manhattan to an ominous corner of rural New York, David hopes to heal his daughter’s psychic wounds — until Emily’s imaginary (?) friend "Charlie" begins terrorizing David, his colleague Katherine (Famke Janssen), and sexy local divorcée Elizabeth (Elisabeth Shue). A supporting cast of red herrings briefly distracts one from the predictable climax, a "surprise" with frustratingly nonsensical implications. (101 minutes)