Horror movies in January are like chardonnays from Texas: No matter how handsomely labeled, you have to assume they're not going to be very good. As it so happens, “Hide and Seek” is not very good.

“Adequately discomfiting,” maybe. Or “intermittently chilling.” But there's little about this sullen, haphazard thriller that would warrant hyperbole as favorable as “very good.” And that's a shame, because with a cast this capable — Robert De Niro, Dakota Fanning, Famke Janssen, Elisabeth Shue and character actor Dylan Baker (“Happiness”) — you expect something better than derivative off-season schlock. Fanning (“I Am Sam”) does her best Wednesday Addams impersonation as Emily Callaway, an only child who becomes hostile and withdrawn when her mother (Amy Irving) commits suicide in the bathtub. Creepy little girls are, of course, a dime a dozen in the formalized world of cinematic horror, but Fanning (“I Am Sam”) holds her own. Fixing her moribund little gaze on the camera, Emily is an intriguing variable, a budding sociopath who could go either way.

Hoping to break Emily out of her dark reverie, her psychologist father David (De Niro) moves her to rural upstate New York — unaware, apparently, that horror movie protagonists invariably fare poorly after such relocations (“Hide and Seek” has a strong “Shining” vibe throughout). Sure enough, Emily becomes even more withdrawn, taking counsel from an imaginary friend named Charlie. David suspects that his daughter has developed a violent mental schism when he finds strange, threatening messages scrawled in crayon on the bathroom tile. When he confronts Emily, he always get the same response: “Charlie did it.”

Naturally, Charlie-or-whoever steps it up a notch, drawing the family's small circle of acquaintances — a friendly single mother (Shue), David's protégé (Janssen) and the local sheriff (Baker) — into an ever more deadly game of “upsetting daddy.” Director John Polson, he of the teeny-bopper stalker drama “Swimfan,” proves adept at juggling our apprehensions: For much of the movie, we're never quite certain if Charlie is an outgrowth of Emily's adolescent id or a third party secretly manipulating her (The childless neighbor, perhaps? The snoopy real estate agent?). David suspects the latter when Emily makes inappropriate, adult-themed references to her parents' love life.

“Hide and Seek” will give you the promised tingles, but also serves as a sobering reminder of De Niro's heyday, when a gimmicky, B-grade script such as this would have passed across his desk unheeded. Any number of lesser-talented actors could have played David, an unremarkable piece of human milquetoast who actually seems to lull De Niro to sleep. When the opportunity for real acting finally presents itself, this erstwhile raging bull doesn't seem to know what to do with it.