What Lies Beneath Review

What Lies Beneath is a departure for Robert Zemeckis, a director whose inhabited many different genres in his multiple decades as a filmmaker, but only delved into the world of horror two other times in his career, with the 1992 horror/comedy Death Becomes Her and the feature that traumatized me as a youth, The Polar Express. What Lies Beneath may not be as terrifying as his 2004 Christmas-themed motion picture, but hey, it works on its own merits as a spooky ghost story with some appropriately bombastic twists that feel like they should be told around a campfire via an adult holding a flashlight under their face.

It takes a while for What Lies Beneath to fully reveal itself as fully a ghost story though, with it actually starting out as a Rear Window knock-off wherein Claire Spencer (Michelle Pfeiffer) keeping an eye on her suspicious neighbor, whom she believes has murdered his wife. She's convinced the spirit of that murdered wife is haunting her house, much to the chagrin of her workaholic husband Norman Spencer (Harrison Ford). Of course, if you think the actual plot is as simple as it seems, you must not be exposed to very many ghost stories!

Of course, plenty of twists and turns ensue, with some of the plot revelations not quite feeling like they gel while other surprises do come across as delightfully kooky and unexpected. The screenplay by future S.H.I.E.L.D. agent Clark Gregg keeps some of those surprises intact by keeping the presence of a ghost in the actual movie muted at first, with some strange happenings in the house (a door opening here, a picture frame following down there) being the kind of things that could be just chalked up to natural occurrences like a gust of wind. It keeps you on your toes on whether or not there really is a supernatural force at work here or if there's a more realistic explanation for everything that's going on.

That being said, carrying over that balance out the more realistic elements of the story and the presence of an actual ghost is where the movie seriously fumbles during its climax, wherein things go entirely in the direction of a more down-to-Earth adventure only for the more paranormal elements of the piece to abruptly come back in an overt way that doesn't quite jive with their previously established subdued nature. That being said, ya still get plenty of thrilling moments in the climax, with one near-death experience Claire and a bathtub being particularly intense as the movie just keeps throwing more and more obstacles at her in this specific scenario.

Michelle Pfieffer is the one playing that character stuck in a bathtub calamity in the climax and she's a mighty fine choice for the lead role, since she teeters on a fine line in portraying Claire as someone that could totally be in contact with something supernatural or maybe just losing her mind altogether. Trying to blend the supernatural with the realistic is something What Lies Beneath struggles with in its climax, but Michelle Pfieffer handles that dichotomy mostly well in her performance as she gives it her all in a spooky tale that's some good o'l fashioned diverting chills n' thrills.