What Lies Beneath

As it unwinds, What Lies becomes both masterful and preposterous.

If you're able to check your brain at the popcorn stand, you'll stand a much better chance of enjoying this crowd pleaser.

A thriller that tries aggressively, but not entirely successfully, to deliver the goods of three genres -- suspense, supernatural and horror.

Never reaches much beyond the surface, and what lies there is all too predictable.

Lacking a smarter screenplay, it milks the genuine skills of its actors and director for more than it deserves, and then runs off the rails in an ending more laughable than scary.

Sparse and implausible screenplay.

Feels more planned than passionate, scary at points but unconvincing overall.

A smart thriller with brilliant acting from Harrison Ford and Michelle Pfeiffer. Definitively one of my favorites. While focusing on the problems of an apparently normal relationship, "What Lies Beneath" has some original scary moments and much suspense.

Solid tension building filmmaking, a little too many fake outs for my liking. I do think knowing the ending twist affected my appreciation a little bit.

Ok movie. The movie keeps you interested throughout. The only problem is in my opinion I thought the ending ****.

What lies beneath? Definitely the most impressive and comprehensive collection of cliches, nonsense absurdities and boring moments ever assembled in this pretentious couldn't-possibly-be-slower film. Nothing happens for the first 90 minutes. Pfeiffer wanders in her home trying to look troubled, has pointless encounters with neighbors, plays some ouija with a friend and from time to time exchanges with Ford some dull dialogue that sounds anything but realistic. And when filming nothing seems to have reached it's limits, well, you just get some more. The final twist doesn't come as a surprise -remember, you had 90' to try and guess it out, nothing was happening on the screen- and the final confrontation is sooooo ludicrous that it keeps me wondering if it has been stolen from the Scary Movie franchise. But surprisingly, I actually rather enjoyed the ending. It gets hysterical as every step seems to have been written under the strict rule of "of all options my characters have, what would be the least logical or probable?" This pure overdose of nonsense situations gets really funny, and comes as a nice and more than welcomed frustration relief after sitting through nearly two hours of pretentious pseudo hitchcokian homage. (I know I got Sir Alfred's last name spelled wrong, but it keeps being deleted by some poorly encoded "Politically Correct" protection stuff that doesn't seem to stand the second syllable of Hitchco**)

Ce machin n’a pas l’air comme ça… mais il ne vaut même pas un pet de lapin ! ici, c’est simplement deux heures d’ennui épouvantable… et qu’on ne se leurre pas : ce pseudo-film fantômatique ne fait certainement pas peur ni n’induit ou n’éveille un intérêt quelconque en quelque façon que ce soit… Non, ce sont deux heures à bailler aux corneilles et ça, c’est une performance extraordinaire avec deux stars telles que Ford et Pfeiffer ! Un tel exploit, seule cette burne de Zemeckis pouvait le faire ! bravo à toi, trou de balle ! t’es un nouveau génie de l’ennui et du vide.