Starring Robert De Niro, Dakota Fanning, and Famke Janssen. Rated 14A.

Gone are the days when Robert De Niro's name above the title guaranteed a great cinematic experience. You could always count on De Niro, especially partnered with Martin Scorsese, to create memorable characters like Taxi Driver's Travis Bickle or Raging Bull's Jake La Motta, now permanently etched into our minds. Inversely, a Scorsese-less De Niro has brought us forgettable films like Stanley & Iris, The Fan, and Flawless.

This has fostered lowered expectations for the new film Hide and Seek, directed by John Polson (Swimfan), in which De Niro plays David Callaway, a New York (where else?) psychologist coming to terms with the recent suicide of his wife. After leaving the city for Connecticut with his emotionally devastated daughter, Emily (Dakota Fanning), David settles into the kind of sleepy Town With a Secret usually found in Stephen King stories. Once there, all hell breaks loose when people and pets start dying at the hands of Emily's imaginary friend, Charlie.

The good news is that despite being a pointless and unsatisfying thriller, Hide and Seek features some inspired performances, particularly from De Niro and young costar Fanning.

As David, De Niro offers his most nuanced work in years. Even when confronted with the possibility that Emily may, in fact, be behind the killings, David, for reasons that become clear later in the film, barely raises his voice above a whisper.

If De Niro has nothing to prove here, in the legacy phase of his career, Fanning is just beginning hers and is already one of film's best preteen actors. One imagines that barring some disastrous personal or professional choices (please, no Uptown Girls 2), she'll be around in 30 years' time. As the creepy daughter, Fanning employs the same defiantly raised eyebrows and killing stares that Christina Ricci brought to the role of Wednesday in The Addams Family. But where Ricci's creepy girl was a darkly comic slacker, Fanning never eases up the tension, lending the film a sense of supernatural mystery found in films like The Shining and The Exorcist.

But before you rush off expecting a topnotch thriller with a gratifying payoff at the end, let's be clear: Hide and Seek is an unnecessary time waster with too many red herrings stuffed into its many plot holes. But it is a rare positive example of a Scorsese-less De Niro, with good work by Fanning and a reliable support cast that includes Famke Janssen, Elisabeth Shue, and Dylan Baker.

It may not be flawless, but at least it's not Flawless.