FilmBlather.com

What Lies Beneath had so many things going for it, it's amazing how much of a stinker it turned out to be. From the get-go, the project had two popular, talented stars and an Oscar-winning director attached. The plot, sounding like a traditional but creepy ghost story, seemed interesting. All of this potential was stuffed into a duffel bag and thrown in the dumpster with the help of an immeasurably idiotic advertising campaign and a horrid screenplay. Not much lies beneath here.

After a watery title sequence, we get the first of many shots of Michelle Pfeiffer, playing Claire, in a bathtub. Claire is a musician who gave up a promising career to marry Norman (Harrison Ford), an accomplished scientist. Their daughter is going away to college, leaving the two of them alone in their big Vermont house. About this time, strange things start happening, mostly to Claire. Doors open and close on their own. Picture frames fall. Then Claire looks into a filled bathtub and sees two reflections -- the other of a woman she doesn't seem to know. After uncovering a few clues, she looks up a name on an internet database (you know, those convenient search engines that enable the user to find virtually any piece of information with precisely one click of a mouse -- if only they actually worked this way) and realizes that the ghost who is haunting her is that of a girl who had disappeared years earlier.

If you've seen the advertisements for What Lies Beneath, you know exactly where this is going (if you haven't, and still insist on seeing this mess of a movie, bail out now). The trailers reveal a crucial plot point -- Norman committed adultery with this girl Claire keeps seeing and now she wants him dead. This fact is what the whole first hour of the movie painstakingly leads up to. The Dreamworks marketing department has rendered the director's efforts to create mystery and suspense futile.

There's a scene about two-thirds of the way through that is featured prominently in the trailers -- Claire ostensibly seduces Norman, only to reveal that she is not at all what she seems. To think how well that scene would have worked had we not known that it was coming sends shivers down my spine.

Admittedly, the marketing isn't the only problem What Lies Beneath has. Lack of story tends not to help things either. The ghost story is played for countless jump scenes and creepy moments only to have it be all but abandoned in the second half, in favor of a ludicrous set of climaxes that defy any imaginable standard of logic. There's no payoff to speak of (another minor spoiler ahead) -- the action culminates in an unimaginative underwater set piece where the villain is vanquished without inspiring any sort of triumphant feelings because the scene before it is too abrupt a turnaround; we haven't gotten around to hating this guy yet.

What Lies Beneath was directed by Robert Zemeckis, a great filmmaker who, I'm sure, will recover from this (hopefully) momentary lapse and get back to making good movies, like his previous Forrest Gump and Contact. People are calling this disjointed mess "Hitchcockian," but while it uses some of the Master's scare tactics, its story is just not thought-out enough. If this is Hitchcockian then The Skulls is Orwellian.