WHAT LIES BENEATH
By: Matthew F. SaundersDate: Thursday, July 20, 2000
Whether or not you like What Lies Beneath will depend, in part, on your tastes as a filmgoer. A carefully crafted thriller, the movie is a fine piece of filmmaking. It's also one that makes no apologies for its deliberate pacing or obvious homages, in particular to Alfred Hitchcock's classic repertoire. Both are intentional on director Robert Zemeckis' part. But taken only at face value, they don't do the film justice, nor do they speak fully to the film's inherent strengths.
The pacing owes much to the film's intricate plot. As the previews and teasers adequately explain, it's been a year since Norman Spencer's (Harrison Ford) adulterous affair. Oblivious to her husband's infidelity, Claire Spencer (Michelle Pfeiffer) finds herself, at movie's beginning, struggling with empty nest syndrome as her only daughter heads off to college for the first time. To make matters worse, her newly discovered free time also resonates with the still-lingering after affects of her year-old, near-fatal car accident.
Enter the couple's new, next-door neighbors, the Feurs. In perhaps the film's most obvious and protracted homage--in this case to Hitchcock's Rear Window--Claire begins filling her emotional void with wild speculations that Mr. Feur has killed his wife. Complicating matters is the distinct feeling that she's being haunted by an apparition she comes to believe is Mrs. Feur, thanks to at first subtle, then escalating, unexplainable incidents. While it should prove no surprise that her fears eventually prove false, they're precipitous and unleash a flood of confusion and paranoia into her life. And when the hauntings only increase in intensity, Claire's erratic behavior convinces Norman that she needs professional help. Welcome to the film's first hour.
What's the point of all this? While some might find the prolonged setup tedious, it's necessary to establish not only the characters, but the fragile world in which Claire lives. At first seemingly perfect, it's in fact a delicate existence, the stability of which has been propped up and supported by her family. With one of those pieces now missing, her balance is thrown and the life that had previously been subsumed by others begins to slowly unravel, layer by layer.
What Claire eventually finds is the central mystery of the movie. And while the trailers certainly give you one piece of the puzzle, the film is not so cut-and-dry. If anything, the film's title, the phrase 'What Lies Beneath,' is the biggest clue not only to where the film is headed, but its process for getting there. As Claire slowly peels away the layers of her life and the mystery of the apparition, she carries herself and the audience deeper and deeper into the dark core that lies within.
Despite all of that, some might still question whether such a protracted buildup is necessary. Many crowds today will likely say no, as they're too used to the fast-paced, hyper-kinetic MTV-style that defines much of today's filmmaking. Many others will say yes, breathing a sigh of relief, understanding the need to invest in characters and let tensions simmer below the surface before allowing the steam to explode outward. Perhaps the film could've withstood a slightly tighter edit, however only to a hair-splitting degree. What matters is that the pacing is effective at building the necessary tension for the film's frequent misdirection and mystery to work, and for the scares--and laughs, for there are several--to be genuine.
Suspense is not a one-syllable word, and inherent in it is the need for time to build it up. While this effect can certainly be achieved in event-driven scares--the boogeyman leaps around the dark corner and attacks busty co-ed #6 with a knife--it's often much more palatable and effective when it's character-based and you actually care about the person being attacked.
On that level, What Lies Beneath works extremely well. Pfeiffer and Ford both turn in great performances, as does Diana Scarwid as Claire's best friend, Jody. And audiences will be surprised by how much it's actually Pfeiffer's movie. While Ford is certainly an equal star, the narrative is driven through Pfeiffer and the dark journey Claire undergoes. What makes it succeed is Pfeiffer's portrayal of not only Claire's fragile nature, but the inner strength needed to pursue her suspicions and confront 'what lies beneath.'
Equally surprising and entertaining is Ford's turn as the flawed Norman. While not every character he's played has been perfect, per se, the performance is a departure for an actor so enshrined by the heroic image he's built over the years. As much of the story turns on Norman's infidelity, not much can be said without spoilers. But he has great chemistry with Pfeiffer, and delivers a subtle performance that purposefully downplays, but doesn't dismiss, Norman's controlling nature and capacity for hiding skeletons.
Now to the homages. There's no doubting Zemeckis' talent as a filmmaker. He's demonstrated his technical, character and storytelling skills numerous times in the past, with such films as Who Framed Roger Rabbit,
What's disgruntled some early viewers of the film is his obvious 'borrowing' of certain scenes or motifs in homage to such works as Hitchcock's Rear Window and Psycho. The old saying says that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but it doesn't say that it disqualifies a subject from being judged on its own merits. That is to say, criticism should not be bound up solely as an exercises in deconstructing a film shot for shot in an effort to locate all the derivative material. To do that would be to unravel every film ever made on one level or another.
In the end, a homage is a homage, and should be enjoyed with a wink and a nudge between those in the know. After that, and as long as the film doesn't crossover and become a blatant rip-off, the film's merits and success should be based on its inherent strengths and flaws. To that end, What Lies Beneath is definitely worth your time. It's an intelligent thriller that asks the audience to invest in its characters and story, and offers great performances, as well as intriguing twists and turns, in return. The cost is simply time. The payoff is a genuinely suspenseful film worthy of its predecessors.
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