Delayed Reaction: What Lies Beneath

Premise: Michelle Pfeiffer learns to fear Harrison Ford.

 

It's been nearly 20 years since I saw this movie and I remembered it a lot differently. To put it bluntly, I remember liking it more. Or, the more nuanced way to say it is that I remember the movie being more impressive. Some of that is by reputation, since I didn't remember the actual movie that well. This is a Robert Zemeckis movie from before he spent his clout developing motion-capture movies. This came between Contact (impressive) and Cast Away (a huge hit). It made $155 million in 2000. It was a huge hit with Harrison Ford and Michelle Pfeiffer. With all that, I thought there was more to it. And I remember from my first time seeing it thinking that there were a lot of good twists. Like, brain-breaking twists.

 

What Lies Beneath is a pretty good thriller. My disappointment is tied to oddly high expectations/memories. This is probably the last moment that Harrison Ford felt like a self-contained movie star, as opposed to a nostalgia-delivery service. It also marked the end of Michelle Pfeiffer as a box office draw. Zemeckis reflexively knows how to deliver the kind of thrills this movie requires. It's a good and watchable thriller.

 

I'm having trouble recalling why it was such a huge hit though. The twist about Ford actually killing the mistress was pretty tame. Were people that surprised by the concept of Ford as the villain? The supernatural aspects don't really make sense. They end up being a source of cheap scares and cheaper story development. How much of this movie never would've happened without unexplained supernatural visions? And, here's a reverse question too. How did this movie cost $100 million? A popular industry complaint these days is the death of the mid-budget movie for adults. I'm sure What Lies Beneath has even been used as an example of this, because this sure feels like a $40-50 million movie. Is the secret to the death of the mid-budget thriller that even those movies got too expensive? I haven't researched enough to say, but it makes you think.

 

I built this movie up too much in my memory. Looking back, it's only a 54% on RottenTomatoes*. I'm with the median take when I say the movie is OK.

 

*Here's where I point out that RT itself is a misused metric and especially the score of any movie from before the RT age is very unreliable.

 

Verdict: Weakly Don't Recommend