Poll Position: What Lies Beneath (2000)

I watched the final Halloween poll winner today, so that will be the end of the seemingly permanent placement of Critters, Ghoulies, and Puppet Master. I'm sorry to those who wanted me to watch those ones. There did seem to be at least a few votes every week for them, but they just never got enough to win. The winner this week was What Lies Beneath. This is a ghost movie starring Harrison Ford and Michelle Pfeiffer. I really wasn't sure what to expect, the trailers made it seem pretty subdued. But you chose it for the poll, and so I must fulfill my duties to you, the reader. Hit the jump to see if this is a movie ghost fans should check out, or if it's something you should just let lie.


Claire (Michelle Pfeiffer) and Norman Spenser (Harrison Ford) have been happily married for years. Norman is a highly respected scientist about to publish a big paper, and is a good step-dad to Claire's daughter Caitlin (Katherine Towne), who is moving out to go to university. He even just moved the family into his father's big charming lakeside home. Despite all the things going well for the family, and everything Norman does for Claire, she still can't get past a car accident that happened 1 year ago.

One day, she hears the woman next door, Mary Feur (Miranda Otto) crying about being scared of her husband Warren (James Remar). A few nights later, she sees what looks like Warren putting something large in the trunk of his car, in the middle of the night, in the pouring rain. Almost immediately she starts hearing sounds, and ghostly things appear to her. Everyone thinks she's just stressing out with the crazy combination of a new house, an "empty nest syndrome", Norman being busy with his soon to be completed project, and the year anniversary of her crash. But even with all these things legitimately stressing her out, that doesn't explain the strange things happening around the house. Is she imagining what she saw next door? Are the events around the house figments of her imagination? Or did something insidious really happen at this lake?

The happy couple relaxing in bed

I know that's a big plot summary, but it's all just beginning stuff before the mystery kicks in. This movie really takes quite a while to ramp up, but in that time, it isn't boring. What we get is great character development, which doesn't happen a lot in many ghost story movies. Usually they're all about the scares, but what this movie focuses on instead is the characters. Claire's varying stresses, questions on if her imagination is running wild being alone in the house all day, as well as many other things are all explored to sufficient detail to give some depth, but not too much as to be boring. It's no surprise then to learn that this film is directed by Robert Zemeckis, the man behind such greats as all the Back to the Future films, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Forrest Gump, and even Cast Away.

Claire sees the neighbour acting suspiciously next door in the middle of the night

While a big part of the movie is about questioning Claire's sanity, and even though we see strange things happen, even we as viewers start to question things like "did that picture really fall by itself, or did she just put it far too close to the edge of the shelf?" While this means that the ghost story part of the film takes a bit of a back seat to the mystery, it ended up really working for me. You'll see some crazy stuff happen, but when even Claire is doubting and questioning what she sees, it forces you to be unsure as well.

This is all backed up by great acting, both on the behalf of Michelle Pfeiffer, and Harrison Ford. The bulk of the movie is carried by Pfeiffer, and she does a really great job, but I really liked Ford here too. He's a scientist, so by nature he simply can't believe his wife when she says she thinks there's a ghost haunting their house. It's not like this is a creepy old house. This was his father's house, and there certainly wasn't a ghost here before! I liked his confusion in how to help his wife, combined with the frustration of not knowing what to do, and wondering if she's subconsciously just looking for attention. The side characters were good too, especially Claire's best friend Jody played by Diana Scarwid. For anyone curious, What Lies Beneath also 100% passes the Bechdel Test for movies! Yay!

Jody mocks Claire at first, but agrees to try a mini seance

I ended up really enjoying this movie, much more than I thought I would. It had good characters, a GREAT mystery, and some good ghosty stuff too. I could easily recommend this movie, but I would say that I didn't find it a very scary film, but a good thriller nonetheless. It had some nice twists I didn't see coming, but at the same time satisfied me by doing a few things I had thought "Wouldn't it be cool if this happened?" and then they did! Thanks to all those who voted on this, it was a good film to end the Halloween movie poll on. If you haven't seen it, it's worth a watch.