What Lies Beneath is a 2000 American supernatural psychological horror film directed by Robert Zemeckis. It was the first film by the film studio ImageMovers. It stars Harrison Ford and Michelle Pfeiffer as a well-to-do couple who experience a strange haunting that uncovers secrets about their past. The film opened in 2,813 theaters in North America, and grossed $291 million at the worldwide box office. The film received mainly mixed reviews, and received three Saturn Award nominations.
Video What Lies Beneath
Plot
After her daughter leaves for college, Claire Spencer begins noticing odd activity coming from her new neighbors, Mary and Warren Feur, in rural Vermont. Claire's husband Norman, an accomplished scientist and professor, dismisses her preoccupation. After witnessing volatile behavior next-door and failing to see Mary for several days, Claire suspects Warren may have killed her. Claire and her friend Jody, a mystic, hold a séance in Claire's bathroom, hoping to contact Mary, to no success. After Jody leaves, Claire finds the bathtub full of hot water and the message "You know" written in the steam on the vanity. Hysterical, she goes to call her husband and finds her computer typing the letters "MEF" over and over.
Norman disbelieves Claire, who is convinced Mary is haunting her. Several days later, Mary arrives at her house alive and well, and explains that she and Warren had a fight, and she left to stay with her mother in Rhode Island for the week. Claire continues to experience strange phenomena in the house: Down by the lake, she sees the image of a woman floating in the water, and discovers a key inside a heater vent. In a broken picture frame, she comes across a newspaper clipping of a missing woman named Madison Elizabeth Frank, who bears a striking resemblance to her, and whose initials match "MEF."
Claire visits Madison's mother, claiming to have been an acquaintance, and steals a lock of Madison's hair that her mother has kept. Later that night, Claire reads about conjuring the dead, and becomes possessed. When Norman arrives home from work, Claire's personality has noticeably changed, and she aggressively seduces him. While on top of him, he notices her eyes turn from blue to green, and her face shifts to that of Madison's; horrified he throws her to the floor, and Claire comes back to her senses. He admits to having had an affair with Madison, who was a student, and Claire recalls a repressed memory of having caught the two having sex. Upset, Claire spends the night with Jody, who reveals to her that she had witnessed Norman arguing with a blonde woman at a cafe in the nearby town of Adamant about a year earlier.
The next morning Claire returns home and finds Norman comatose in the tub with a hair dryer, an apparent suicide attempt. The paramedics are called, but he is given a clean bill of health. Convinced Madison's spirit is attempting to take revenge, Claire asks Norman if he killed Madison, which he denies. Claire visits Adamant, where she spots ornate lockboxes at a shop with identical keys to the one she found in her house. In the lake, she discovers an identical box, which she unlocks with the matching key; inside, she finds a necklace. Norman changes his story, and claims Madison killed herself in their home, and that he disposed of her body by putting it in her car and pushing it into the lake.
Norman agrees to confess to authorities, and calls 911 and explains he has information about Madison's disappearance. He leaves the room, and Claire redials the phone to discover he actually dialed 411 (information), faking the conversation. Norman attacks her, and paralyzes her by injecting her with succinylcholine. As she begins to feel the effects and attempts to crawl away but fails, he admits to murdering Madison after she had threatened to go to the dean of the university about their affair. Norman places Claire in the bathtub, which he fills with water. As the bathtub fills, he spots Madison's necklace around Claire's neck; as he moves her, her face contorts to that of Madison's corpse. Startled, Norman slips and smashes his head on the sink, and is knocked unconscious.
Claire, recovering from the paralysis, manages to shut the tap off in time to save herself from drowning. She regains her strength and finds Norman has left the bathroom. She discovers him seemingly unconscious downstairs, his head bleeding profusely. He awakens and attacks her, and she flees in the couple's truck, which has their boat hitched to the back. As she is crossing the bridge over Lake Champlain, Norman bursts through the back window and grabs Claire; she frantically dials 911 on her cell phone and the truck careens down the embankment into the lake. Underwater, Claire escapes out the window, but Norman grabs her leg. The truck dislodges Madison's car at the bottom of the lake, and her body floats toward them. Madison grabs Norman and he drowns, allowing Claire to swim to the surface. Later in the winter, Claire places a single red rose on Madison's grave.
Maps What Lies Beneath
Cast
- Harrison Ford as Dr. Norman Spencer
- Michelle Pfeiffer as Claire Spencer
- Diana Scarwid as Jody
- Miranda Otto as Mary Feur
- James Remar as Warren Feur
- Katharine Towne as Caitlin Spencer
- Ray Baker as Dr. Stan Powell
- Joe Morton as Dr. Drayton
- Amber Valletta as Madison Elizabeth Frank
- Wendy Crewson as Elena
Production
Documentary filmmaker Sarah Kernochan had adapted a personal experience with the paranormal as a script treatment featuring a retirement aged couple dealing with restless but compassionate spirits. DreamWorks commissioned a rewrite from actor-writer Clark Gregg. This script was later delivered in 1998 by Steven Spielberg himself to his director friend Robert Zemeckis, who had signed a deal for DreamWorks to distribute the films of newly founded production company ImageMovers, and announced interest in doing a thriller film. Harrison Ford then signed to star on the film, even agreeing to clear room in his schedule for the project. Michelle Pfeiffer then followed as DreamWorks started to deal with 20th Century Fox regarding the film's distribution. Ford and Pfeiffer were Zemeckis' first and only choices for the lead roles. Fox agreed to distribute both What Lies Beneath and Zemeckis' other project Cast Away, with the thriller having Fox doing the domestic distribution and DreamWorks the international one.
Zemeckis filmed What Lies Beneath while Cast Away was shut down to allow Tom Hanks to lose weight and grow a beard for his character's development. As Gregg had to remain with production for rewrites, he had to decline Aaron Sorkin's offer to read for a major role in Sports Night - though Sorkin would later write for Gregg a minor role in the final episodes of the series.
Reception
Box office
What Lies Beneath opened in 2,813 theaters in North America and grossed $29,702,959 for an average of $10,559 per theater. The film ended up earning $155,464,351 domestically and $135,956,000 internationally for a total of $291,420,351 worldwide, close to triple its production budget of $100 million
Critical response
The film received mixed reviews. The film currently holds a rating of 46% on Rotten Tomatoes based on 124 reviews with an average rating of 5.5 out of 10 with the site's consensus stating that "Robert Zemeckis is unable to salvage an uncompelling and unoriginal film." The film received a score of 51 on Metacritic based on 35 reviews. Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B+" on an A+ to F scale.
The New York Times wrote that, "at the start, [Zemeckis] zaps us with quick, glib scares, just to show he still knows how, but his heart isn't in this kind of material anymore. His reflexes are a little slow." The Los Angeles Times called it "spooky with a polished kind of creepiness added in... What Lies Beneath nevertheless feels more planned than passionate, scary at points but unconvincing overall." The Chicago Sun-Times wrote: "Lacking a smarter screenplay, it milks the genuine skills of its actors and director for more than it deserves, and then runs off the rails in an ending more laughable than scary. Along the way, yes, there are some good moments." Time Out thought that, "after a slow build that at times makes every hair stand on end â€" Zemeckis rolls out every thriller cliché there is. A pity, because until then it's a smart, realistically staged, adult-oriented and extraordinarily effective domestic chiller." Empire wrote: "The biggest surprise is, perhaps, that what emerges is no masterpiece, but a semi-sophisticated shocker, playfully homaging Hitchcock like a mechanical masterclass in doing ‘genre’. The first hour is great fun... It’s an enjoyably giddy ride, certainly, but once you’re back from the edge of your seat, you realise most of the creaks and groans are from the decomposing script."
Michelle Pfeiffer received some positive notice for her performance. Roger Ebert called her "convincing and sympathetic."
In his review, Ebert said that he felt the problem with Zemeckis' desire to direct a Hitchcockian film was to involve the supernatural (the film contains several musical, visual and plot references to Psycho and Vertigo, among other Hitchcock films), which he believes to be something Alfred Hitchcock himself would never have done.
Accolades
Harrison Ford and Michelle Pfeiffer both won Blockbuster Entertainment Awards for Favorite Actor â€" Suspense and Favorite Actress â€" Suspense, while Diana Scarwid was nominated for Favorite Supporting Actress â€" Suspense.
The film received three Saturn Award nominations, for Best Horror Film, Best Director (Robert Zemeckis) and Best Actress (Michelle Pfeiffer), but lost to Final Destination, Bryan Singer for X-Men and Tea Leoni for The Family Man, respectively.
See also
- List of ghost films
References
External links
- What Lies Beneath on IMDb
- What Lies Beneath at AllMovie
- What Lies Beneath at Box Office Mojo
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