There are bad horror movies, and then there are bad horror movies that make you question whether the real monster is the editor. Brett Leonard’s Hideaway (1995), adapted from Dean Koontz’s novel, is one of those rare films that manages to insult its source material, its cast, and the very concept of eyesight all at once. It’s a movie about near-death experiences, psychic connections, angels, demons, and the dangers of letting Jeff Goldblum act in anything that doesn’t involve dinosaurs or apartments with giant flies.
The Setup: Satanic Emo Kid vs. Antique Dealer
The movie begins with Jeremy Sisto as a Satan-obsessed teenager who looks like he was kicked out of Hot Topic for being too enthusiastic. He kills his family in the least convincing ritual sacrifice ever committed to celluloid, mutters the Lord’s Prayer backwards (which is scarier when my GPS does it), and then impales himself on a ceremonial knife. He immediately meets some cosmic tentacle blob in the afterlife and gets punted to Hell. Cool start, right? Don’t worry—this energy will never return.
Enter Hatch Harrison (Jeff Goldblum), an antiques dealer whose hobbies include being quirky, driving recklessly, and making audiences wonder if he’s improvising entire paragraphs of dialogue because the script gave up. After a car crash, Hatch “dies,” only to be revived by Dr. Nyebern (Alfred Molina, looking like he’s already regretting signing the contract). But resurrection comes with a bonus feature: Hatch is now psychically linked to Sisto’s devil-worshipping murder boy. Think of it as Freaky Friday, but with more corpse art and less Jamie Lee Curtis.
The Family: Stock Characters in Distress
Christine Lahti plays Hatch’s wife, Lindsey, who mostly stands around sighing like she’s in a commercial for wine spritzers. Their daughter, Regina, is played by Alicia Silverstone in full pre-Clueless mode. Her job? Sneak out to nightclubs, pout, and almost get murdered. If there’s a family dynamic here, it’s “Jeff Goldblum acts weird while everyone else refuses to acknowledge that Jeff Goldblum is acting weird.”
The Villain: Satan’s Intern
Jeremy Sisto’s “Vassago” is supposed to be terrifying—a man possessed by a demonic spirit who leaves behind ritualistic bodies and builds a “monument to hell” in an abandoned amusement park. In reality, he looks like the guy in your freshman dorm who wouldn’t stop playing Nine Inch Nails on loop and said Nietzsche quotes at keggers. He’s sweaty, shirtless, and constantly glaring into the camera like he just remembered he left his laundry in the dryer.
The film wants us to believe he’s dangerous. Unfortunately, his evil lair looks less like a monument to Hell and more like a Spirit Halloween that never closed down.
The Psychic Connection: A Wi-Fi Signal from Hell
The movie’s big gimmick is the psychic bond between Hatch and Vassago. Hatch dreams the murders as they happen, while Vassago sees through Hatch’s eyes, which means he can creep on Goldblum’s daughter. Instead of being tense, it plays like two roommates accidentally sharing an Amazon account—awkward, intrusive, but ultimately just an inconvenience.
Goldblum spends half the movie waking up in a sweat, stammering, and yelling things like, “I saw it! He’s going after her!” with that signature Goldblum jazz-hand delivery. Everyone around him shrugs and tells him to take a nap. Meanwhile, the cops are so incompetent they make Barney Miller look like Mindhunter.
The Scares: Sponsored by Windows 95 Screensavers
Whenever Hatch or Vassago has a vision, we’re treated to a special-effects sequence that looks like the director fell into a bargain bin of CGI. Endless glowing tunnels, lightning blobs, and swirling lights that wouldn’t pass muster on a Star Trek: Voyager episode. The afterlife resembles a lava lamp having a stroke.
There’s a particularly goofy moment when an angel emerges from Hatch—played by his dead daughter Samantha, glowing like a Christmas tree topper—and literally fistfights Vassago’s demon form. It’s like Mortal Kombat for people who thought church lock-ins were too hardcore.
The Supporting Cast: Wasted Talent Anonymous
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Alfred Molina: A doctor who specializes in “resuscitation.” His main contribution is explaining plot holes and looking tired. You can tell Molina is fantasizing about being in Boogie Nights instead.
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Rae Dawn Chong: A psychic who basically shows up, says “Yup, you’re cursed,” and is then immediately murdered. Thanks for your service.
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Bruce Abbott & Susan Tyrrell: Oh wait, they’re not even here. That was The Demolitionist. See? That’s how forgettable this movie is—I’m hallucinating better casts.
The Climax: Satan at Six Flags
The finale takes place in Vassago’s hideaway (get it?) under an abandoned amusement park. Here, Regina is tied up while Sisto rants about hellfire. Hatch and Lindsey arrive, and things devolve into a mix of bad fistfights, glowing angel duels, and Jeff Goldblum grunting like he’s passing a kidney stone.
When the demon soul bursts out of Jeremy Sisto, you half expect it to yell, “Finish Him!” before Hatch skewers him. The movie pretends this is profound—good versus evil, light versus dark. In reality, it looks like two kids arguing over who gets to use the good action figure.
The Twist: Fake-Out Dreams and Fake-Out Patience
The movie ends with a fake-out dream sequence where Jeremy slits a nurse’s throat only for Hatch to wake up in bed laughing. This is less “shocking twist” and more “we ran out of ideas and figured, why not mess with the audience one last time?” It’s cinematic gaslighting: the film shrugs and says, “What, you were expecting closure?”
Verdict: Dean Koontz Deserved Better
Hideaway manages the rare feat of making Satan boring. It squanders Jeff Goldblum, wastes Alicia Silverstone, and somehow convinces Jeremy Sisto to scream “I am Vassago!” like he’s auditioning for a high school goth band. The CGI is laughable, the scares nonexistent, and the theology ripped straight from the Cliff’s Notes of Paradise Lost.
The only scary part is that this movie made $26 million, which means actual human beings paid to see it. That’s the real horror.
