"What Lies Beneath" is essentially a thriller, and is
somewhat intriguing. But, somewhere along the line it
got repetitive and rather droll.
What the film basically boils down to is scare, after
scare, after scare. Some of them work, but most seem
too contrived. Michelle Pfeiffer stars as Claire, who
seems to have built her whole life around her husband,
a successful scientist (Harrison Ford). After their
daughter goes off to college, the couple have the
whole house to themselves. It doesn't take long before
Claire realizes that the house is haunted. The door
opens by itself. The bath tub fills up by itself.
If there is one thing I liked here, it was definitely
the performance by Pfeiffer. She convincingly plays a
woman obviously terrified and misunderstood by her
husband. Ford also does a good job, but Pfeiffer
effortlessly steals the scenes.
The film would've been a lot better if the scares were
cut down. There's far too many and, of course, there's
the dependable scenes when a person is scared by
something that actually turns out to be totally
innocent.
I didn't like this film enough to recommend it, but
fans of Pfeiffer will agree that this is one of her
better performances. Sadly, "What Lies Beneath" is
nothing really special.
