The Task: Watch and write about every movie on my shelf, in order (Blu-rays are sorted after DVDs), by June 10, 2015. Remaining movies: 139 Days to go: 95
Movie #299: What Lies Beneath
I love movies that thwart expectations. Harrison Ford has always played a good guy. Even if he’s a nerf herder or a scoundrel or an unfaithful husband and slimy lawyer who grows a whole new personality after being shot in the head, his characters are almost always on the right side of the law, or they are the law, or they’re fighting for justice somehow. He’s even played the President of the United States, who single-handedly fought off Russian terrorists on his plane with his bare fists. The guy likes to be the hero. That’s why What Lies Beneath is such a departure.
What Lies Beneath works, one hundred percent, because the audience expects the best from Harrison Ford as Norman Spencer. He’s an academic, a sophisticate. He has a beautiful wife named Claire (Michelle Pfeiffer) and a gorgeous house in Vermont and you are compelled to think the best of him. That’s the kind of character Ford plays. He has an entire movie that can be (and has been) boiled down to him vehemently declaring over and over “I did not kill my wife!” And not ten months prior to What Lies Beneath coming out, Ford starred in a movie in which his loving wife was dead again, only it turns out she was cheating on him with the husband of the woman played by Kristin Scott Thomas. He’s the good guy; he’s the cuckold; he’s the right one. Even if the ghost haunting his wife is some student Norman had an affair with a year ago, clearly it is some Fatal Attraction sort of situation. She’s just some psycho hose ghost and he’s an innocent victim who made a mistake. One mistake! An indiscretion! It should hardly even count. He’s the impeccable one, right?
Okay, so What Lies Beneath is one of those movies that I’d love to be able to talk about without revealing too much of the plot, but that ship has pretty much sailed at this point — and honestly, it’s a movie from fifteen years ago. If you haven’t watched it by now, chances are you weren’t going to UNLESS someone told you the plot. And the plot is really, surprisingly great. (Props to S.H.I.E.L.D.’s Agent Coulson — Clark Gregg — who I guess moonlights as a screenwriter, for writing this one.)
It’s safe to say What Lies Beneath was not what I was expecting, but it really surprised me in the best of ways. It’s a murder mystery and a horror story, but it’s not gratuitous or gory. The horror is created almost entirely through atmosphere and tone — setting, music, lighting — and there are some incredibly innovative shots meant to provide alternate visual perspectives: close, confining shots, done at awkward angles, or reflected through mirrors. One even seems to come up from below the floor. There is a physical ghost (Amber Valletta), but she’s used with great restraint and to great effect. She shows up at the most opportune times, to great optimal jump moments, and then the rest of the time her presence is implied through objects or events (I don’t believe in ghosts, but if my bathtub ever spontaneously filled itself once, much less on multiple occasions, I’d be moving.), and Pfeiffer even gives one hell of a great subtle possession scene, where we know Claire’s altered but her husband does not. And the entire final showdown, once Norman has no more outs, is a very suspenseful, tense and satisfying end, all around.
There’s a red herring story featuring Claire’s neighbor Mary Feur (Miranda Otto) that doesn’t seem to be handled quite as well as it could be, and the editing could be just a little bit tighter, but for the most part I find the movie incredibly successful. Even factoring in the two sort of obvious Chekov’s Gun situations (One, never show your villain’s students administering a paralytic agent to a rat without making full use of that paralytic agent come the film’s climax. And two, never explain that your cell phone doesn’t have service until the midpoint of the bridge without eventually needing to make a call on that bridge.), the plot unfolds at the pace and with the effect that the director and writers intend. It’s a solid film, and it’s unlike most everything else that rogue, rugged hero Harrison Ford has ever done.
Viable Option 