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What Lies Beneath

What Lies Beneath

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Rating: 5 stars
Summary: A brilliant, complex and masterfully engaging horror.
Review: What Lies Beneath, a brilliant, masterfully played out homage to Hitchcock is quite frankly the scariest movie I have ever seen. I came out of the cinema pale and shaking and while I was watching the film I was so scared I even had to shield my eyes at parts. All the scary parts are brought to life by a great score with manages to grab you in the nuts at the most unexpected times. The movie is over 2 hours long but never tires. I have watched this about 5 times now and every time I get the chills and always appreciate the film more. Robert Zemeckis excellent direction reminds us of how many great movies directors can do in 1 year. Cast Away and this film were both brilliant experiences and Zemeckis directs them both brilliantly. The performances excel, with Michelle Pfeiffer excellent as Claire Spencer who, while trying to uncover a masterful mystery, is slowly losing her mind. Harrison Ford brings up many shocks and takes a surprising back seat. His performance is fabulous. What Lies Beneath builds its suspense - especially in one horrifyingly Hitchcockian bathtub sequence - and always uses its ideas. I couldn't find many plot holes but the film can be complex at times. If you watch the film carefully and take note of everything that's happening I'm sure you'll understand the ending and the mystery that is slowly unlocking. What Lies Beneath has many great camera shots too like Michelle's toe peaking above the bath water, her hand clutching the side, her grabbing a sharp piece of glass and it reflecting her terrified face and a freaky close-up on Harrison Ford's eye. I love this movie, and it will always be a heart-stopping and fun experience for me to sit through.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Slow, but an overall great movie!!
Review: The director thought he might kill some time and add more suspense to a mountain of suspense already by suggesting that Pfeiffer's character watch and monitor her neighbors activity. Personally, all that was a waste of time and did not add anymore credibility to the movie itself. The idea: man cheats on wife, wife had accident, wife develops amnesia as result of accident, wife and hubby move to different location, wife is getting strange feelings in her new house, wife puts 2+2 together, hubby is a lying SOB, you get the picture. A great movie that shouldnot be missed!!

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Hitchcock-class horror
Review: "What Lies Beneath" is one of the best movies ever made - with respect to the technical side of the cinematography. Light, photography and camera work are excellent, especially if viewed on DVD or Home Theater system. Particular snapshots are the work of pure art, as we know it - Michelle Pfeiffer photographed contemplating the mystery of the lake is the best example, I think. Never before a simple snapshot with no special technical effects had affected me this much. Crystal-clear picture indeed is the most remarkable feature of the film.

With "What Lies Beneath", Zemeckis paid a tribute to the late Master of Suspense, Alfred Hitchcock. This film shares more with the old black-and-white masterpieces than any other film in history. Produced in 2000, the movie can boast of modern surround sound, and even if you do not have a five-piece soundworks system, you will feel the cold sweat running along your spine provided that you watch the film with normal headphones. I practically guarantee you that, scared senseless, you will turn back to see what that creepy noise is...what's whispering in the back of your room.

This is a first-rate horror, and I admit that it's my personal best for all reasons mentioned above, and also because of superior acting. Mrs. Pfeiffer has never been better, more seductive, and more mysterious - a classic, elegant, beautiful, talented actress. Really, there is nothing more I could want.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: A Top Notch Thriller
Review: What Lies Beneath is a great traditional thriller along the lines of Alfred Hitchcock. If Hitch had the movie magic we have today, this is a movie he would've made. Harrison Ford and Michelle Pfeiffer star as a couple who live in this great new house. Suddenly, the wife starts getting weird visions and ghostly goings on. She believes their new neighbor has killed his wife. But it is something far more close to home. Michelle Pfeiffer shines in this film. This is really her baby. Harrison Ford is as good as usual, but is given the backseat in the first part. He comes into his own in the last half. Director Robert Zemeckis has concocted a stylish thriller that no one seems to make anymore. Some of the scares are genuinely scary!. They are shot with such grace and style, that they come off beautifully. It's nice to see something like this on the screen after a tidal wave of awful slashers immitating "Scream". As far as Suspenseful thrillers go, What Lies Beneath delivers in a big way.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: To copy Hitchcock's style.
Review: In this supernatural thriller, a woman believes that a visitor from the past is trying to guide. Feeling lonely after her daughter leaves home for college, Claire played by Michelle Pfeiffe, begins to sense that something is wrong in her house, and feels a spirit is trying to contact her. At first her husband played by Harrison Ford, who is a scientist doing research in genetics, attributes her paranormal beliefs to stress or possibly a nervous breakdown, and sends her to a psychiatrist who puts no more stock in Claire's stories than does her husband. While Claire's contention that someone or something sinister is that seems to lead her down a number of wrong paths, in time she becomes convinced that the mysterious happenings at her home are somehow connected to the disappearance of a woman who was a student at the nearby college.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: an gr8 thrill
Review: if you like to jump off youre seats wile watchin a movie this is ure fav

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: This is a wicked movie!
Review: If you like thrillers that keep you on the edge of your seat, you will love this movie. Harrison Ford and Michelle Pfeifer make an excellent team, and the suspense keeps you going right up until the very end. What the ad says is true "It does for bathtubs what Psyco did for showers." Trust me, you will never look at your bathtub the same way again. Watch this movie, it will freak you out and you will enjoy every second of it.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: tolerable time waster
Review: The biggest challenge facing a genre picture like “What Lies Beneath” is to be able to cover well-worn territory without making us feel as if we’ve seen it all before. This film doesn’t exactly succeed in doing so, but it does offer a few impressive set pieces as compensation. “What Lies Beneath” borrows heavily from movies like “Rebecca” and “Psycho,” adding generous helpings of “Rear Window” and “Wait Until Dark” to the mix for good measure. .... It does an effective job at the beginning when it is setting up the scenario, injecting just enough ambiguity into the proceedings to make us question whether Claire is truly seeing what she thinks she is seeing or whether she is suffering from delusions brought on by mental instability. Unfortunately, once that issue is decided for us, the film loses some of its intriguing quality and becomes a more standard issue horror film. Moreover, the major plot “twist” is one we can pretty much predict five minutes into the film. Given its weaknesses, “What Lies Beneath” delivers the goods for those who want nothing more than a relaxing, goosepimply good time at the movies. Director Robert Zemeckis, though he appears to be slumming here a bit, knows how to shoot an effective jump-out-of-your-seat suspense sequence – although he does tend to rely overmuch on the “false scare” technique that seems to be so popular in films of this type. As to the acting, Ford pretty much walks through his part, surely dreaming of better things to come in the role department, but Pfeiffer manages to bring a dignity and depth to a character that could easily have degenerated into the hysterical wife stereotype. “What Lies Beneath” is an effective time killer provided you realize beforehand that the answer to the film’s title is: “Not much.”

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Hitchcockian horror mystery
Review: Harrison Ford plays Norman, a workaholic academic and research geneticist, who begins to have worries about his wife, Claire, (Michelle Pfeiffer) a retired cellist who has suffered, some time ago, a serious car crash. The film is set in the aftermath of her sending her daughter Caitlin (Norman's stepdaughter) to college and away from the secluded lakeside family home in Vermont. Claire, oddly enough, begins to "hear voices" and experience hallucinations in the vicinity of the lakeside domicile, which include seeing the face of a young woman reflected in the lake. Growing increasingly distraught, Claire begins to consult a psychiatrist, as well as a medium with the help of a ouija board, while entertaining the suspicion that the couple who live next door are involved, especially so since the wife has disappeared, without any plausible explanation, some time before. Slowly, and with much trepidation, Claire is convinced that the only way she can come to the bottom of the problem is to "make contact" with the phenomenon inhabiting the house and the outlying surroundings. This thriller unfolds breathlessly, generating a number of twists (but few surprises) along the way, as we discover the reality of Claire's and Norman's marriage, their strained emotional life and a dark spot in their past. The film excells as a suspense-charged tale, laced with elements of the paranormal and supernatural, eventually building up to a tense climax involving a flooding bathtub and a furious car chase, both which provide helmsman David Zemeckis with the opportunity of scoring some genuine shocks. The performances of the two mature star leads are deserving of the highest praise, with Ford in his typical aggressive, but also sensitive mode, while Pfeiffer, who is now well into her forties, remains astonishing.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: What Shouda Been Buried, You Mean!
Review: As a film for which I had high hopes, "What Lies Beneath" truly disappointed. With stars Harrison Ford and Michelle Pfeiffer, as well as killed director Robert Zemeckis, I expected this to be an intriguing, well-acted thriller. That was not to be.

Upon initial renting, I found myself bored to death by the slow pacing, the absences of real thrills, and an clichéd premise that had been much better in other films: y'know, the one where hubby has a deadly secret and wifey begins her suspicions. With about a half hour to finish, I returned the tape.

Seeing the last quarter of the film recently on its HBO airing, I was no more satisfied by the denouement. Ford seems to sleep his way through the ending and Pfeiffer continues in the "screaming Mimi" vein.

Even Alan Silvestri's score, in an attempt to mimic the great Bernard Herrmann, is as waterlogged as is the film.

To paraphrase Bensen, I "know" Hitchcock, and this ain't no Hitchcock!


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