What Lies Beneath

THE SKINNY
Ghost torments New England couple whose life isn’t as perfect at it first appears

THE BOTTOM LINE
Michelle Pfeiffer salvages this unthrilling thriller

THE FULL REVIEW
After seeing What Lies Beneath, it became abundantly clear to me that fear has to be the easiest emotion to elicit from a film audience. Directed by Robert Zemeckis, What Lies Beneath is a supernatural thriller chock-full of scary moments – the kinds that somehow manage to startle you in spite of your acute awareness that something is lurking behind every corner.

The film stars Harrison Ford (Random Hearts, Air Force One, Six Days Seven Nights) and Michelle Pfeiffer (The Story of Us, Dangerous Minds, The Fabulous Baker Boys) as Norman and Claire Spencer, who on the surface appear to be a happily married couple with a picture perfect life. All of that changes, however, after Claire begins to suspect that the Spencers’ next door neighbor has brutally murdered his wife. Claire begins hearing and seeing mysterious noises and images around the house, which she concludes are being caused by the ghost of her recently deceased neighbor. But the audience knows better, for they have seen the movie trailer which not so subtly reveals the true identity of the angry apparition. Fearing for her life and that of her husband, Claire tries desperately to convince Norman that she is not imaging things. Will he come to accept the truth before it is too late?

One need not look too deeply into What Lies Beneath in order to realize that Zemeckis and screenwriter Clark Gregg derived much of their creative inspiration for the film from Alfred Hitchcock. While this all but ensured that What Lies Beneath would have its suspenseful moments, the end result was a film that could barely stand on its own merits. Aside from several chilling scenes that takes place in the Spencers’ bathroom and a creepy voyeuristic bit, Zemeckis relies on stock gimmicks – inanimate objects suddenly springing to life, the frightened wife unknowingly backing into her adoring husband’s arms, the family pet as the source for unusual noises – to scare the audience. Sure, these tactics may work, but so does the act of my wife popping out of the closet to scare me five nights in a row. Audiences may jump out of their seats a few times when they see this film, but they won’t experience the consuming sense of dread that overcame them during last summer’s true thriller, The Sixth Sense.

What worked in this film? Director of photography Don Burgess and production designer Rick Carter, who worked with Zemeckis on Forrest Gump, did a terrific job of creating an ominous look to the film. And, Michelle Pfeiffer gave a convincing and, at times, thoroughly delectable performance. Unfortunately, the same can’t be said of Harrison Ford, who proves once again that he can be as dull as he was enjoyable in such films as Star Wars, Raiders of the Lost Ark, and Witness.

Ultimately, Zemeckis has created a film that lacks much originality beneath its slick veneer. The film’s few bright moments are dampened by its many shortcomings and What Lies Beneath ends up being almost as silly as it is scary.

By: Craig Ettinger

HIGHLIGHTS
*Some eerie bathroom scenes
*Michelle Pfeiffer – And to think, she can act too!

LOWLIGHTS
*Huge marketing snafu in which the identity of the ghost is revealed in the trailer, rendering a major plot line during the first half of the film a useless distraction
*Harrison Ford – where’s Indiana Jones when you need him?