What Lies Beneath (2000)

Touches You

Brilliant and touching

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

Harrison Ford and Michelle Pfieffer are a couple in a beautiful house haunted by a ghost. Bob Zemeckis is a great director but this is one of his lesser efforts. There is nothing really wrong with the film except looking at the marquee names one would have expected more. It has ghosts, jump scares and spooky music- even great locations but it is better suited as a film made by a first time director not the guy who made Back to the future or Contact. Harrison Ford and Michelle Pfieffer add allure to the star cast but you can clearly see by their motions they are pondering on when the cheque will clear.

The first time I watched "What Lies Beneath", I was completely blown away by its engaging, mysterious plot and well-acted characters. Even after repeated viewings, I can still enjoy the creepy atmosphere and well-crafted narrative.For a basic plot summary, this movies sees Claire (Michelle Pfeiffer) and Norman (Harrison Ford) Spencer send their only daughter off to college. Now in an "empty nest", Claire begins to hear voices, sense a presence, and witnesses many strange things happening around the house and with the neighbors. Is she going a bit loopy...or is something really going on?I am a huge fan of mysteries, and this film is most definitely full of that! Robert Zemeckis is a master director, so he knows exactly how to craft a movie with the right kind of pacing to fully suck the viewer into the lives of Claire and Norman. Not until the final few minutes of the movie do you know exactly what is going on. I would like to say more, but to do so would go into spoiler territory, and this is one of those movies where you don't want to be spoiled!"What Lies Beneath" is (admittedly, by the producers) a throwback to Hitchcock's "Psycho". The mood, the music, the usage of a bathtub (vs. a show), and even some names are taken from that great thriller.I have a "favorite movies" list on Facebook, and this one is worthy of induction. If you are a fan of mystery/thrillers and somehow haven't already seen this, you are in for a real treat!

What lies beneath really does make the best out of the material it's given. Michelle Pfeiffer is just awesome in her starring role! I mean she just fits the role so well and really rocks it! And Harrison Ford is great here, he is determined, dramatic, and even scary at times. The suspense and tense energy that runs rampant thought what lies beneath is incredible, it's so creepy and unwatchable at times. Just the music itself will creep underneath your skin. Robert Zemeckis has done it again, he successfully made an entertaining, well acted and well written creepy thriller. Also Pfeiffer and Ford do have good on screen chemistry together, they just work and click during a scene, especially an intimate one. The visuals are great here, and the film is directed and shot very well, great to look at. The script is well written with intelligent dialogue between the main characters. The ending is very satisfying, I liked it, it is creepy, smart, and bone chilling. It's not exactly a big twist, but just a little one. You may see it coming, then again you may not, depends on the viewer. I give what lies beneath an 8/10.

Robert Zemeckis's What Lies Beneath, although a bit melodramatic at times, is a nicely freaky bit of domestic terror, in the vein of Hitchcock. It's a pseudo supernatural thriller that I saw at a very young age, so I have a spooky nostalgia for it, as it scared me in that way that only kids can get, staying with you even as you get older and making whatever film it was that made you feel that way resonate unconditionally for you. Harrison Ford and Michelle Pfeiffer play an affluent married couple who are beset by strange paranormal phenomena that may or may not be linked to one of their pasts. Ford is a busy medical professional, away for days at a time working, Pfeiffer the stay at home wife, plagued by creepy voices, noises and bumps in the night when alone in their large mansion, in some nice eerie sequences. Clues lead her to the odd job couple living next door (James Remar and Miranda Otto) but soon it becomes clear the answers won't be as easy or obvious as that, and the cold, clinical nastiness of a thriller that knows what it's doing and won't compromise sets in, freezing us in our seats for a nice jarring third act of unexpected resolution that lets the actors go to some places they haven't ventured in their careers. Ford is calm, cool and barely connected, Pfeiffer is detached and perplexed, and there's fun work from Wendy Crewson, Joe Morton and a ghostly Amber Valetta as well. The dog making a nasty discovery in the backyard pond is a nice moment for me, one I had dreams about for a while after seeing this at probably an all too young age. A nice little package of a thriller; cold, classy, frightening.