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New Century of Cinema
DOWSE Guide to the
Movies
by Tony Lee editor of
Pigasus
Press
What Lies Beneath
Director: Robert Zemeckis
130 minutes (15) aspect ratio 2.35:1
review by Gary Couzens
Claire Spencer (Michelle Pfeiffer) is left alone during the day when her daughter goes
to college and husband Norman (Harrison Ford) is away at work. Her nerves already
frayed by a car crash, Claire begins to suspect that her neighbour has murdered his
wife and soon sees glimpses of a woman who appears to be a ghost.
What Lies Beneath begins as a horror film and turns into a suspense
thriller, but it's the kind of genre-blend that doesn't work. The two elements finally
work against each other, and an effective build-up is thrown away by every cliché
in the thriller book. The film could also happily lose about twenty minutes. Despite
Ford's top billing, the main character and the one through whose eyes we see everything,
is Claire. Pfeiffer does a good job in charting Claire's journey from anxiety to terror
to final fighting back. Ford has less to do but act as the instrument of Claire's
self-doubt.
But despite its flaws, What Lies Beneath is worth seeing. Zemeckis
is a very competent craftsman. (He's also prolific: this film was made in the middle of
the shooting schedule of the forthcoming Tom Hanks vehicle Cast Away, made for
the same production companies and with much of the same crew.) Note the way he keeps
the audience on edge from the start by withholding basic expository information - who
are these characters and what is their relation to each other? - for longer than many
directors would. Zemeckis's use of 'scope adds to the effect of some scenes: although
he protects TV audiences by keeping his actors within a space that can fit a 4:3 TV set
(or has them on opposite sides of the screen so that a TV version can cut from one to
the other), but in other scenes he uses the edge of the frame to good effect: such as
the scene where Claire goes upstairs, on the far left a computer switches itself on.
Not a total success then, but one of the better of the major summer and
autumn releases.
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