Production notes

In its opening weekend in US theaters, the film grossed $21 million. The film grossed $51.1 million in the U.S. and $71.5 million internationally, for a worldwide total of $122.7 million.

On Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 12%, based on 154 reviews, and an average rating of 3.9/10. The website's critical consensus reads: "Robert De Niro and especially Dakota Fanning have earned some praise for their work in Hide and Seek, but critics have called the rest of the film derivative, illogical and somewhat silly." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 35 out of 100, based on 34 critics, indicating "generally unfavorable" reviews. Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B−" on a scale of A+ to F. Paul Arendt of BBC Movies gave the film two stars out of five, commenting that "Robert De Niro continues his long slide into mediocrity with yet another charmless psycho-thriller". John Monaghan of Detroit Free Press gave the film a scoring of two out of four, saying, "The second half gets downright silly as the country home turns into a slaughterhouse. What could have been a Sixth Sense-style intelligent thriller heads straight for the drive-in, though it's still handled with considerable skill." Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film two stars out of four, writing, "There was a point in the movie when suddenly everything clicked, and the Law of Economy of Characters began to apply. That is the law that says no actor is in a movie unless his character is necessary." According to The New York Times, the film was hampered by budgetary restrictions, and the Toronto Sun said that it was one of De Niro's worst.