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Starring Harrison Ford, Michelle Pfeiffer

Director Robert Zemeckis

Category IIA

What Lies Beneath is old-fashioned. This has nothing to do with the lengthy pedigree of its stars Michelle Pfeiffer and Harrison Ford (below) or the longevity of its director Robert Zemeckis. What Lies Beneath is simply an extended tribute to 'things that go bump in the night'.

Silence. Sawing cello music. Sudden swinging reflections in mirrors. Strangers who unexpectedly steer into frame. Supernatural spectres in the bathwater. There's no trick Zemeckis is ashamed to try - but how effective they are depends on your own susceptibility to suspense.

What Lies Beneath unfolds in several parts - it would be best, actually, to avoid the trailer or reading too much about this film and I'll try hard not to give anything away. It begins with the emotionally fragile Vermont housewife Claire Spencer (Pfeiffer) waving her daughter off to college. As her husband, Dr Norman Spencer (Ford) is a workaholic trying to emerge from the shadow of his brilliant father, Claire fills her 'empty nest' by becoming unhealthily absorbed with the new neighbours.

She hears fights, loud love-making, sees the husband bundle a package into the car late one rainy night. Her own home is suddenly empty and scary. The front door opens by itself, a picture continuously falls off the piano, the bath is filled with water. Is it all in Claire's mind? Or has the next-door-neighbour's wife been murdered? Claire, who we learn has recently had a traumatic car crash, becomes obsessed and Norman sends her off to a shrink who, oddly enough, suggests a ouija board.

It's not hard to work out how this film will develop. There's a distinct shortage of characters to fill the traditional roles and Zemeckis, while not averse to red herrings, can only go so far to distract attention from the main culprit. He's paying a fulsome tribute to Alfred Hitchcock, but unlike the master of suspense, resorts to the supernatural to fill in the blanks. While the first hour is very elaborately plotted, the final, inevitable, 15 minutes drag What Lies Beneath into the watery realms of the unmemorable.

Pfeiffer, returning to the screen after a long absence, single-handedly gives this film its edge. She's required to squirm, scream, scare and scarper for vast amounts of screen time and, to her credit, she never over-plays any of the above. She hands the film over to Ford to fill in the blanks and blank, these days, is sadly what he's good at.

Zemeckis is either going to get you with his scary sorcery - people were screaming in the preview audience - or you'll be left cynically cold. I enjoyed the old-fashioned shots but felt the film unravelled by the end. But there's a thrill in thinking you know what's going to happen next, and still being surprised. A terrified character walks by the prone body of a seemingly-dead person. Cut to an ankle and a hand. Silence. What happens next? Aargh! With set-ups like that, What Lies Beneath just has to be a lot of old-fashioned fun.

What Lies Beneath is screening at UA cinemas, Broadway Circuit and AMC Festival Walk



What Lies Beneath