| What Lies Beneath Release Date: 20/10/00 Certificate: 15 Official Website Director: Robert Zemeckis Producers: Jack Rapke Screenplay: Clark Gregg |
| The movie concerns frisky old couple Dr. Norman Spencer (Harrison Ford) and his wife, Claire (Michelle Pfeiffer). It starts like a particularly well-directed soap opera, as the Spencer family pack their teenage daughter off to university and go about their daily routine. These domestic scenes provide a contrast to give the more shocking ones impact, but there is really too much of it, and it's all a bit dull. With her daughter away Claire is at something of a loose end. Watching her new neighbours provides a Rear Window-style red herring. This coincides with some odd goings-on in her own house, with doors mysteriously opening of their own accord, and pictures spookily falling by themselves. As the events become more ahrrowing Claire begins to discover secrets about her husband's past,and her own. There are a lot of moments in this movie designed to make the viewer jump, to the extent that towards the end you are reacting to the sudden crescendo of music before you've even seen anything. It's particularly well-done however. The plot is such that you want to keep watching to find out what happens, you are slowly fed clues, knowing all the time that you are going to be made to suffer as the director takes every opportunity to wring tension and potential shocks from each scene. It's perhaps let down by a couple of particularly disengenuous moments, like Claire walking into her husband's laboratory as they are discussing a drug that renders all mammals paralysed, and the way the information that mobile phones only work when they are at least half-way over the bridge, is delivered. the success of the movie is largely dependent on Pfeiffer and whether or not you care about her character. For the most part she does well and is easy to identify with, although she can be a little hysterical. Ford gives his usual charismatic performance. This is a very well made, suspenseful movie, that keeps you guessing almost to the end, although if ghosts could be exorcised with soap, the characters would not have a problem. 7/10 |
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