Hey folks, Harry here in Austin with yet another hateful review of WHAT LIES BENEATH. And again, it takes it easier on the film that Moriarty does. What is stunning is the sudden complete lack of momentum this film has going into it's week of release... in direct contrast to what happened with X-MEN. As the release came closer... the reviews flowered forth... because that movie kicked ass. I'm going into WHAT LIES BENEATH with low low llllooooowwwwww expectations... and hope for the best... I simply can't stay away from a Michelle, Harrison and Zemeckis flick... no matter how many flashing lights signal an impending train wreck. I must see it to believe it.
WHAT LIES BENEATH (DREAMWORKS PICTURES. 130 MIN.)-*1/2
Starring Harrison Ford, Michelle Pfeiffer, Diana Scarwid, Joe Morton, James Remar, Miranda Otto and Amber Valletta.
Screenplay by Clark Gregg based on a story by Sarah Kernochan and Clark Gregg.
Directed by Robert Zemeckis.
The scariest thing about the new horror film What Lies Beneath is how much talent has gone to waste on screen. Directed by the otherwise reliable Robert Zemeckis (Forrest Gump, Contact, Who Framed Roger Rabbit) and starring Harrison Ford and Michelle Pfeiffer, the movie confuses slow pacing for suspense, and predictability for storytelling. The end result is a movie that has one great scare, a mushroom cloud of déjà vu and an overall waste of time.
Ford and Pfeiffer play, respectively, Norman and Claire Spencer. They’re a happily married couple that lives in a beautiful lakeside home in Vermont. She’s a retired musician and he’s a genetics researcher living his father’s shadow. When we meet them, they are saying goodbye to Claire’s daughter from a previous marriage as she heads off to college, leaving just her and Norman in the house (with her husband at work quite a bit, it’s pretty much her alone).
Well, sort of. As soon as her daughter is out of the house (and the picture), strange occurrences begin to happen. Claire begins hearing noises and seeing some pretty terrifying (at least to her, not this viewer) visions. A lengthy bout of these otherworldly encounters first leads her to the place most of us would hopefully wind up: at the shrink’s office (said psychiatrist is played here by Joe Morton). Claire believes that these events are connected to Mary Feur (Miranda Otto), the wife of the new couple who has moved in next door. After a few weeks of seeing her and her husband Warren (James Remar) fighting, she has mysteriously vanished, and Claire feels that she has been murdered and her spirit has returned.
That, however, is not the case. Mary is indeed alive and well, and the disturbances in Claire’s house (that always seem to happen when Norman is not home) have escalated. Claire soon discovers that the unearthly visitor is connected to a missing college student who disappeared around the same time of Claire’s auto accident and that Norman was having an affair with this particular student. This does not bode well for a fun time at the Spencer’s household.
It doesn’t really bode well for a fun time at the movies for you or I, either. While the film is nice to look at (thanks to Don Burgess’ handsome widescreen photography), Robert Zemeckis’ directing drains the film of any life the film has. This is particularly distressing considering that this is the same man who crafted such solid crowd-pleasers as Romancing The Stone, Who Framed Roger Rabbit and of course, Forrest Gump. He showed real innovation and imagination in creating worlds of wonder and fun. Here, all he seems to be doing is ripping off Alfred Hitchcock, with the first hour being nothing more than a Rear Window clone that serves as a red herring the size of the shark in Jaws. Someone should tell him that Brian DePalma has already mined that territory dry (and if he knows when to leave something alone, we should all follow suit).
He also seems to be a bit confused when it comes to properly applying suspense to a story. Believing that a slow moving camera will build tension, Zemeckis instead winds up dragging out what should have been a 100-minute movie into a protracted 130-minute endurance test, draining the last remaining stands of life out of his story. His over abundant use of sound effects to make the audience jump works for about five to ten minutes in the start of the film, but after a while they become so commonplace that they become as predictable as the last act of the film.
That predictability is more the fault of the screenplay by Clark Gregg, which is a sad mix of different horror and suspense film elements and paper-thin characters that we could care less about. Claire, the central character, is never given a chance to develop. In the first act, she’s a nosy neighbor. The second act, a disturbed Nancy Drew and the third, she becomes The Victim, all the while suffering from otherworldly scares and noises. Yawn. As for Norman, he’s not even around for most of the film until the latter half and when it is revealed what his role is in all of these proceedings (aside from his screwing a student), it is less of a surprise for the viewer as it is an example of last-minute rewriting in order to accommodate a big-name star who has taken on the role.
Sadly, those big stars can’t do much to bring those characters to life. Ford tries his best, and has some fun in the last act (some, not a lot), but it really doesn’t add up to much. It really is sad to see Ford stuck in such a rut of mediocre (Sabrina) to downright god awful (Random Hearts, The Devil’s Own) films over the past six years (his last all around good film: 1994’s Clear and Present Danger), and this didn’t help matters any. I wish I could be one of the many in film geek land who would cry out “Do Indiana Jones 4!!!!” but since I thought that series was running on fumes after its first film, perhaps it is time for Harry to take some time off and relax (or just pop in on Late Night With David Letterman from time to time. He’s really funny when he shows up there).
As for Pfeiffer, I have to admit that I have never been one of her biggest fans. I enjoyed her work in Scarface, The Witches Of Eastwick and Batman Returns, where she stole the film as Catwoman. But, in the majority of her work, she seems to be playing, well, herself. Her performances come off as pedestrian, rarely coming to any life outside her public persona. Here, her facial expression seems to be stuck somewhere between bursting out crying and being in utter pain. Hmmm. I guess she could feel what I was going through watching the film.
There are a lot of scary things to be seen out there this summer. The hairstyle of failed comeback diva Diana Ross, the teeth on a person who smokes a lot, the stuff you may find under your bed or some of the folks who populate South Boston. Any of these sights are scarier than anything you will see in What Lies Beneath, except the expanding bald spot on the top of Harrison Ford’s head after he dives into the water. Han Solo, say it isn’t so! (PG-13)
-ShawnF.
