WHAT LIES BENEATH was the 10th most popular movie of 2000, pretty much a guaranteed audience draw, being a psychological-horror-ghost-thriller with Harrison Ford and Michelle Pfeiffer, directed by Robert Zemeckis. Throw in marital trouble. Throw in the kitchen sink, as the entertaining but progressively silly movie loosens its grip on sense the further it goes along its 130-minute path. Convoluted, with too many sudden-shock moments, it’s Coincidence Heaven, and the extended finale has you throw up your hands and say “really?”
Pfeiffer (so thin here she’s almost past her usual ethereal beauty into near-skeletal) thinks she sees things, thinks she’s losing it, thinks there are ghosts, thinks her husband is up to something. Ford is patient, and then gets less so.
Good looking film (cinematography by Don Burgess), has the stars doing their best, and Alan Silvestri’s score clearly shoots for a Bernard Herrmann feel, ala Hitchcock. Alfred certainly would have made do with fewer visual jolts than Zemeckis piles on.
With Diana Scarwid, Miranda Otto, James Remar and Joe Morton. Lot of money was sunk in–$100,000,000, but it brought back to the surface $291,400,000 from hand-holding couples in cinemas around the globe.
What Lies Beneath is Pfeiffer’s movie, and although I prefer her stronger and gutsier — she wins my sympathy anyway, creating a believably haunted woman. Too bad the script isn’t worth her effort.
Never seen her give a bad performance. Some less than great films, sure, but she’s always good.