Wonderful character development!

Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

Harrison Ford and Michelle Pfieffer are a couple in a beautiful house haunted by a ghost. Bob Zemeckis is a great director but this is one of his lesser efforts. There is nothing really wrong with the film except looking at the marquee names one would have expected more. It has ghosts, jump scares and spooky music- even great locations but it is better suited as a film made by a first time director not the guy who made Back to the future or Contact. Harrison Ford and Michelle Pfieffer add allure to the star cast but you can clearly see by their motions they are pondering on when the cheque will clear.

Harrison Ford and Michelle Pfieffer are a couple in a beautiful house haunted by a ghost. Bob Zemeckis is a great director but this is one of his lesser efforts. There is nothing really wrong with the film except looking at the marquee names one would have expected more. It has ghosts, jump scares and spooky music- even great locations but it is better suited as a film made by a first time director not the guy who made Back to the future or Contact. Harrison Ford and Michelle Pfieffer add allure to the star cast but you can clearly see by their motions they are pondering on when the cheque will clear.

As the "haunted house" chiller seems to currently be in vogue, it comes as no surprise that all the big studios should jump on the bandwagon - after all, they're hoping for another SIXTH SENSE. This tale in particular is an old-fashioned ghost story free of the ludicrously poor CGI special effects which have ruined fare like THE HAUNTING remake. While it certainly passes the time and is well worth watching, be warned that this is no SIXTH SENSE. What it is, is a derivative thriller only worth watching due to the direction and actors involved.Firstly, the bad points. As is the case with a lot of films today, this film desperately needs some originality. The story of a woman being haunted in a house alone is a very old one indeed and WHAT LIES BENEATH is content to rehash a lot of the clichés we associate with haunted house fare - the ancient creaking door scene for one. Another flaw is the film's bloated running time - at two hours and ten minutes, this one will give you cramp and for no reason, either. Some subplots and scenes - such as the psychiatrist interludes - could happily be hacked from the script with little effect. A lot of the scenes in the film are needlessly prolonged, and some careful pruning could have added some excitement. Strangely enough, in the finale, the opposite occurs and about fifty mini scenes are packed into ten minutes - this is where all the excitement has been stored, and the sudden adrenaline rush seems a bit hurried and desperate in itself.Another problem is the so-called "horror" content. For me, this film works better as a thriller for many reasons. Every time there's a pause, or a potentially scary moment in this film, you just know things are building up to a jump scene, where somebody or something appears suddenly in the film and there's a loud burst of music on the soundtrack. The classic example of this would be somebody turning around and bumping into somebody else suddenly. This happens in WHAT LIES BENEATH a lot. A heck of a lot. While this kind of basic shock tactic works, it's just horror at its most simplistic and therefore rather disappointing. You won't find any of the creepiness of THE SIXTH SENSE around here.The acting from seasoned veterans Pfeiffer and Ford is excellent, as to be expected. With Pfeiffer you would expect nothing less, and it's refreshing to watch a respected actress appear in a film like this now that it's fashionable as opposed to the wealth of TV actresses appearing in such fare in a television format throughout the nineties. As for Ford, he plays a deliberately boring character for much of the film but really comes into his own towards the end; he's cast against type and great with it. As for the other actors, the underrated Joe Morton is wasted as a pointless psychiatrist while Diana Scarwid is an exceptionally irritating friend of Pfeiffer's. James Remar thankfully pops up to put in a nice imposing performance.Packed with red-herrings, lots of clichés, and enough references to Hitchcock to make you sick, this is a flawed but interesting film and a darn sight spookier than many previous offerings in the '90s. CGI is thankfully shoved aside in favour of more old fashioned scares, with the ugly computer animation only popping up a couple of times. One exceptional scene - this film's highlight - does for the bathtub what PSYCHO did for the shower, with a prone and paralysed Pfeiffer lying in a bathtub slowly filling with water. A horrific concept expertly done, immediately followed by the film's best scare. Other things to watch out for include plot holes (Pfeiffer retrieves a buried casket from underwater single-handedly), one moment of painful violence, and the crazy "chase" ending which really gets the adrenaline pumping. The ending of the film is predictable but effective. WHAT LIES BENEATH may not be a masterpiece in this particular genre, but it's well worth a watch.

Norman Spencer, a university research scientist, is concerned about his wife, Claire, who a year ago was involved in a serious accident, and has just sent off her daughter to college. Claire starts hearing voices and witnessing eerie occurrences in and around their lakeside home, including seeing the face of a young woman reflected in water. Claire thinks the phenomena may have something to do with the couple living next door, especially since the wife has disappeared without explanation. At her husband's urging, Claire starts to see a therapist, and she tells him she thinks the house is being haunted by a ghost. His advice........... try to make contact. Enlisting the help of her best friend, Jody, and a ouija board, Claire seeks to find out the truth..........So this film was made because Zemeckis had nothing to do while Tom Hanks lost weight for Castaway. If this really is the case, I wish Hanks does more of these roles, because the result is a solid 'Old-Fashioned' horror movie, with the ubiquitous Zemeckis sheen.The concept and story of the film isn't the most original thing in the history of cinema, but the unique selling point of this film is the twist. It's not as in your face as The Sixth Sense of Se7en, but to have Harrison Ford, the all American hero, Han Solo, Indiana Jones, the President for crying out loud, is a wonderful inclusion to what otherwise is a stereotypical ghost story.Zemeckis has obviously done his research on Hitchcock for his filming styles, and the references are a subtle as a sledgehammer. It's not a bad thing though, but sometimes they do cause you to roll your eyes a little. The first two acts are quite unsettling and and have a very strange feel to them. Zemeckis throws us a red herring, leading the audience to believe that Claire is being haunted by the girl next door. While it's a neat concept, it's dealt with too quickly and we are left with Claire doing a lot of detective work and basically letting the audience in on who the ghost is.But then the final third is with us, and it goes absolutely bonkers for the last twenty minutes. There is little dialogue shared between the two leads in this final part, but Zemeckis let's body language, camera angles and mise en scene take the forefront.Pfeiffer and Ford are both brilliant in their roles, so good, they actually make the rest of the cast seem a little cookie cutter in what they are doing.All in all, it's nothing more than a b-movie ghost story, glossed over with brilliant performances, and wonderful direction.And for once, the blatant use of digital effects only add to the charm of the movie.