R E V I E W S
What Lies Beneath (2000)
Starring: Harrison
Ford, Michelle Pfeiffer, Diana Scarwid, Joe Morton, James Remar Rating: PG-13 Studio: DreamWorks SKG Review Posted: 7.26.00 Rating: 5/10
By Stephen.
"Nothing substantial beneath it"
Some movies are scary. Take The Sixth Sense and Stir of Echoes for example. They both had a good story, an interesting twist, a good pace, and a believable theme. Here comes What Lies Beneath and you have those elements as well, but one is absent. It's believability. That's exactly the thing that matters in a horror movie like this. If it's unbelievable and predictable, it's worth not even a troll's fart. If it's the other way around, you have an entertaining thriller that will keep your eyes on the screen until the end. Sad to say, What Lies Beneath didn't exactly make it that, but it did have the potential.
Claire Spencer (Pfeiffer) is the wife of college genetics professor Norman (Ford). Both live a happy life in Vermont but after Claire starts seeing visions of a woman who might or might not be a ghost. It appears to be the ghost of a woman that Norman had a secret affair with one year ago. Of course, Norman kept it a secret, but when Claire figures out too much and starts to jeopardize Norman's marriage and genetics project, he's forced to take dramatic measures. However, these measures seem so drastic that Norman could be viewed as arrogant. Also, it's not entirely understood (in my view) why Claire wants to clear and bring up Norman's past so badly, getting herself and Norman into big shit she probably never even bargained for.
What Lies Beneath suffered from its deathly slow pace and its sense of unbelievability. While in The Sixth Sense, young Cole's ability to see ghosts was justified, Claire's ability to see the ghost of Norman's past lady friend (whom he had an affair with last year) is not. Here, it seems that just because of the dead woman's hair Claire is able to walk around with the ghost's spirit in her. A subplot involved Claire thinking that the wife of the neighboring man was killed. The killer being the husband. But later it's revealed she's fine. All this was adding to Claire's suspicion of something being wrong in her house; the front door was always open. She starts to take on a crazy side, which she kept denying.
Director Robert Zemeckis (Forrest Gump) added a great deal of eerie feelings to the movie. However, the great use of fright scares in What Lies Beneath became somewhat repetitive and felt too set-up. Towards the end, Norman kept ridiculing himself to make Claire even more suspicious. Aside from that, the last 25 minutes were a pure shocking experience, with scares and terror almost every three minutes, especially the bathroom scene.
Overall, What Lies Beneath did a good job on the scares but wasn't entirely original and able making those scares believable. There wasn't much of a supporting cast here and it seemed that Michelle Pfeiffer (Claire) had her own movie, as Harrison Ford (Norman) was never really home when Claire had the visions of a ghost. Performances of the two stars were good and bad. While Pfeiffer was doing most of the challenging stuff, Ford seemed to never fully reach his potential as Norman in this movie (adding to his rather dull character in Random Hearts). Other than that, if there's a movie that will entertain and scare, it's What Lies Beneath. Just try to ignore some of the irritations it throws at you here and there.
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