Hey, everyone. "Moriarty" here. When Harry and I went to the Metreon for our special advance GLADIATOR screening this past spring, we met a number of AICN readers face to face for the first time, and one of them was Enigma Boy here. An average film geek like many who read here. Nice to see him in print again, and for those of you who think I was too harsh to this film (I wasn't... not nearly), this should serve as a nice rebuttal. Check it out.
Y’hello Harry,
Enigma Boy here. I just got back from the EW screening of Robert Zemeckis’ What Lies Beneath. Now, I realize that the last thing you (and all the AICN readers) want to see is another review that thrashes the shit out of this film (such as Moriarty’s scathing review), so I’m not going to do that. I’ll say it now, this film is deeply flawed, but I enjoyed it. Yes, you heard me right, I enjoyed it. It’s a well-directed suspense thriller in every sense of the word. It’s traditional, and that’s what I liked about it.
This film showed me why I’ve loved Zemeckis since Roger Rabbit (excluding Death Becomes Her, of course). The camera is almost always moving, flowing perfectly. It’s smooth, fluid, and that’s always commendable. Unfortunately, since I know filmmaking so damn well, I recognize each and every ominous movement of the camera, which can be distracting, but overall, I just fed off the crowd reactions (note: they were eating it up, screaming like shit). Zemeckis directs this with a strange sense of detachment, but maybe that’s the idea. I don’t think I ever actually felt for the characters very much, but I blame that much more on the screenplay, which, in itself, leaves much to be desired. Also, Zemeckis puts in some amazing visuals, which he has perfected so well throughout the years that even when I knew I was looking at visual effects, I could not tell. It…and I hate to use this word again…flowed.
There is one major flaw in this movie plotwise, and this is what stopped me from enjoying this film as much as I could have. If you view plot structure the way I do, you’d understand what I mean. I believe that everything in a script has to have a reason to be a part of the plot, a payoff, a connection to the other incidents. But this part of the plot, nearly half the movie, only adds a few clichéd aspects, some emotion, but in the end just seems a 45-minute setup to an only semi-humorous incident halfway through the film.
The acting is fine, the dialogue is sometimes cheesy but still fits the atmosphere, and there are some very nice twists. Overall, it develops into a Hitchcockian suspense thriller in more ways than one. It does somewhat greedily take an aspect from Rear Window, and Psycho is evident in much of the second half. The music, which I really enjoyed, starts off like an above-average Alan Silvestri score, but develops into a strange hybrid of Bernard Herrmann scores, including the already evident Psycho in addition to the likes of Dangerous Ground, Vertigo, Torn Curtain, and Cape Fear. So, the Hitchcock aspect is basically what made this film worthwhile for me. I understand Zemeckis is kind of ripping from the ol’ Master of Suspense, but I just adore the eerie tension that connects his movies to What Lies Beneath.
Signing off,
Enigma Boy
