411mania.com: Movies - 31 Years, 31 Screams: What Lies Beneath

You have to give Robert Zemeckis credit for good taste if not necessarily good direction in his 2000 horror-suspense film What Lies Beneath. The Oscar-winning director of Back to the Future and Forrest Gump wears his Hitchcock love on his sleeve here, and while he certainly has the Master's flair for camera setups, he could have used Hitchcock's notorious penchant for making the running time directly proportional to a person's bladder.

Thankfully, the film benefits from a good performance from Michelle Pfeiffer and a very different kind of role for Harrison Ford.

Pfeiffer is Claire Spencer, a stay-at-home mom whose only child (Katherine Towne) has gone off to college leaving Claire as less "stay-at-home mom" than "woman with too much time on her hands." The fact that the Spencers are so well-to-do that they live in a somewhat reclusive neighborhood doesn't help.

During a bout of Empty Nest Syndrome, Claire overhears her neighbor Mary (Miranda Otto) crying on the other side of their large fence. She offers to help, but the woman just runs off.

Claire suspects that Mary's husband Warren ("Dexter's" daddy James Remar) is abusive or cheating – or both. Norman (Harrison Ford) is a busy doctor and can't be bothered with Claire's crackpot theories, especially when it's obvious she's just manufacturing this narrative for attention.

Strange things start happening around the house. The usual, ghostly things – pictures falling, mist coming out of the vents, bathwater starting and stopping on its own. When she doesn't see Mary at home anymore, Claire assumes that Mary must be a ghost haunting her.

Norman sends her to see a psychiatrist (Joe Morton, wasted in a superfluous small role). The psychiatrist tells her to contact the spirit using a Quija board (So, that's what $100+/hour gets you!).

Claire and her kooky sister Jody (Diana Scarwid, playing the role of "Ethel" in the tandem) contact the ghost, but not in the way they were hoping. Still, Claire remains convinced, and when the ghost of a young woman appears to her, she knows she has to act.

Claire publicly accuses Warren of killing his wife, but her theory is complicated when Mary shows up alive and well at her husband's side. Claire begins to think that maybe she really is cracking up, but the ghost still haunts her house, and it seems that maybe it's connected to her husband Norman.

And from there, What Lies Beneath turns into another film entirely, although one that's still fairly obvious (and even more obvious thanks to Zemeckis' decision to reveal key plot points in the trailer).

As with most Robert Zemeckis films, What Lies Beneath is visually stunning. Dozens of little nods to Hitchcock are peppered throughout the film, from Rear Window to Suspicion, and it's clear that Zemeckis has a true affinity for the Master of Suspense.

However, there's a hollowness in each of these references. Because Zemeckis is a special effects guru, each of his scenes is aided with state-of-the-art technology, and they sometime come off as overly polished. Specifically, there's a scene in which the camera moves seamlessly from the cab of a truck to a boat being towed behind it. This is a shot that wouldn't have been possibly in Hitchcock's time, and it feels impossibly showy onscreen.

Another problem that really bogs down the film is its clunky screenplay structure. The entire first act is the MacGuffin designed to distract you from a plot thread that hasn't even been introduced yet. In other words, it's filler.

The sad thing is that the film really doesn't need filler but has plenty anyway. At over two hours, the film could stand to be trimmed of the superfluous plot thread involving the neighbors and Joe Morton's character, who only exists in order to advance the plot with non-sequitors. What kind of psychiatrist would feed a person's perceived delusion?

And speaking of existing only to advance the plot (or, rather, blatantly inserted into a scene to set up a later scene), there is the little discussion about the new paralysis-inducing drug that Claire just happens to walk in on. Hmm. What an extraneous piece of information. I wonder if it might be useful later on.

At the heart of it, though, there is a pretty good ghost story in What Lies Beneath. If vampire stories involve metaphors surrounding sexuality, then ghost stories can certainly be seen as metaphors for the lead character's internal angst (which is what The Turn of the Screw was all about).

At the beginning of the film, we see Claire's daughter leaving for college and Claire having a hard time adjusting to being "just a woman" again. She's lost the role of mother, and while she tries to make up for it as a wife, Norman is just too busy to play the role of fulltime husband.

Claire is a woman without a role in the world anymore. She's… well, obsolete. She can't be a mother, and she can't be a sexual woman. She has to redefine herself, and that's why she projects death on her next door neighbor. The Claire that she had been for 18 years is dead. Further, when her worst fears are confirmed, it just reinforces the fact that a younger woman could just swoop in and take her place with Norman.

The 411: Although Zemeckis gives it a go, a good ghost story really relies of subtlety, not the kind of rollercoaster ride Zemeckis is known for. It's a problem that nearly brings the whole film crashing down in much the same way The Frighteners collapsed under its own weight near the end. It's worth a look, but an overloaded script and too-glossy direction keep it from being a great film. B-

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