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As Halloween approaches, I am reminded that it really effective
supernatural thrillers have been a bit thin on the ground lately.
I remember the times when, as a kid, I used to watch the Sunday
Night Horrors by myself on TV and get so freaked that making
my way back to bed afterwards was a precarious and nerve wracking
experience. While over time I may have become somewhat immune
to the cliched scare tactics of horror movie directors, I have
also been disappointed with recent attempts at this genre (with
the exception of last year's Blair Witch Project and The Sixth
Sense). But with What Lies Beneath, director Robert Zemeckis
has managed to re-create the truly spooky movie and succeeded
in scaring me more than I should really admit.
Michelle Pfeiffer and Harrison Ford play married couple Claire
and Norman Spencer. He is a brilliant geneticist who is busy
working on another breakthrough. She is the overly glamorous
housewife who is dealing with empty nest syndrome after packing
off daughter Caitlin to college. They live in a large house
on the shores of a lake (already a bit spooky). The couple next
door to them are always arguing and then one day the wife vanishes
mysteriously (getting a bit spookier). Around the same time,
weird things start happening to Claire when she is alone in
the house; doors opening mysteriously and pictures falling off
tables (getting well creepy now). Of course there is probably
a rational explanation for all this, right? Well, a lot of the
rest of what happens is annoyingly given away in the trailer,
but in case you haven't seen this, I won't spoil things for
you now. Suffice to say that things are not what they seem and
it all gets pretty tense and leads up to thrilling (if not a
little hokey) ending.
Zemeckis wheels out all the horror / thriller clichés:
there's the mysterious things that only happen when Claire is
alone, there's the slow build up to an obvious fright, there's
good use of mirrors, showing us facial expressions of shock
before showing the source of the fright, spooky houses, creepy
lakes, creaky doors, and of course loads of haunting music.
These are all tired clichés, but only because they have
been so often misused. In the hands of a good director (such
as Alfred Hitchcock - to whom Zemeckis is clearly paying homage),
these devices can be used to guarantee goosebumps.
There isn't much in the way of character development in this
movie so Harrison and Pfeiffer aren't given much to do, but
as experienced professionals, they carry off their lightweight
roles creditably - even if their characters are a tad annoying
at times. The plot is also a little creaky with some bits that
don't make much sense and other elements that are probably given
away far too early.
But while the script could probably have done with a bit of
resurrection, this is a minor quibble. The real measure of the
success of this film for me was that I was stilling jumping
at my own shadow several hours afterwards.
Superbly chilling stuff. Watch it alone at your peril.
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