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This got a PG-13 ?!? Surprising, since the sexual politics and occasionally-shocking tableau presented seem to indicate a clear R-rating. That aside, DreamWorks' foray into the ghost story corner of the horror genre manages to pay off, not because of the big-budget trappings, but in spite of them.
Although Harrison Ford gets top billing in What Lies Beneath, it's really Michelle Pfeiffer who is the central character. She plays Claire Spencer, the wife of celebrated Vermont science professor Norman Spencer (Ford), and the beginning of the film finds them rediscovering the intimacy of marriage entering middle age, now that Claire's daughter (from a previous marriage) has gone off to college. All would be well, except for a series of visions Claire begins to experience....images in the bath tub or in the lake by the house of an unidentified woman.
As the visions increase, Norman becomes increasingly vehement in his denial that anything supernatural is going on. A subplot about a dysfunctional next-door couple (complete with a "I think he murdered his wife and that's the ghost I'm seeing!" red-herring story point) is eventually dispelled, and Claire begins to uncover the truth behind her disturbing visions and her husband's escalating desperation to write these off as products of her imagination. Clearly he knows something he's not willing to tell.
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From the give-away-too-much commercials on the television, Harrison Ford's character has obviously been responsible for the death of this unfortunate woman. Moreover, the tale would assume a sharp resemblance to the plotline of his 1990 courtroom drama Presumed Innocent, in which an adulterous lawyer is implicated in the murder of a woman who turned out to be his mistress. But as we discover here late into What Lies Beneath, Norman Spencer is no regular Joe who simply made a mistake and had to cover his ass. Instead, he's got the capacity to commit murder, if it's necessary for self-preservation. And his own creature comforts (read: success and academic respect over love for family) make him ready to do it again, once Claire finds out the truth and demands that he disclose it to the authorities. What ensues during the last portion of the film is a remarkably well-done cat-and-mouse with Michelle Pfeiffer giving her all as pursued heroine, and Harrison Ford in an unlikely Jason turn....call it Indiana Voorhees, I guess. As a capable director in other mainstream fare, Robert Zemeckis shows here an apt grasp for creating suspense and delivering a good shock, even when you know it's coming. The musical score by Alan Silvestri may scream "Psycho redux !!!", but that's almost like criticising Randy Travis for sounding too much like Merle Haggard.
What Lies Beneath is a finely-tuned ghost tale that manages to evolve itself with precisioned pacing straight up through the unsettling end revelation and final confrontations. TV-spot triteness notwithstanding, this one is damned decent.
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