If you wait long enough you can find successful films for free on Amazon Prime. What Lies Beneath had big-name star power and still retains a “horror” classification, although “thriller” is used about as often. I actually enjoyed it and found some parts as scary as I am comfortable getting. Although I guessed who the killer was well before the climax, I wasn’t sure how this would end. This made the last fifteen minutes or so very tense. There may be some spoilers as I ponder this a bit, so be warned. Of course, the movie is nearly a quarter-century old, so you may already have an idea of what happens. I’m a purveyor of older culture, it seems.
Claire Spencer, and her new husband Norman, live in an isolated spot in Vermont. Norman is a genetic engineer and Claire used to be a musician, but the death of her first husband and adjusting to being an empty nester lead to her neglect of playing. She starts seeing a ghost in the house Norman inherited from his father. She comes to believe the ghost is of a missing young woman from the area, and she begins to find clues that link her husband to this unsolved case. At first you think it’s going to be like Rear Window, but it turns into something very different. The sense of unease is quite effective—you know something’s wrong but you’re not sure exactly what it is.
This is another of those movies where the genre feels up for grabs. There’s an actual ghost and there are stingers. Yet it’s directed by Robert Zemeckis, not really known as a horror director. It’s stylish and has Michelle Pfeiffer and Harrison Ford in the leads. It’s not really gritty at all. There is blood and fear, though. The more movies I watch the more I realize that genre is a tenuous thing. Stories are forms of expression and sometimes they come in the varieties that explore some of the darker parts of life. Norman’s tragic flaw is that he values his career above all else. He tries hard to outshine his father’s accomplishments—he lives in his childhood home but refurbishes it. He can’t get out from under that shadow and that drives him to extremes. The movie received mixed reviews, but I found it gripping. It’s well acted, as you’d expect, and hey, there’s a ghost. It’s close enough to horror to work for me.
