What Lies Beneath

Grade: B-
Verdict: A decent, old-fashioned ghost story.
Details: Starring Michelle Pfeiffer and Harrison Ford. Rated PG-13 for terror/violence, sensuality and brief profanity. 2 hours, 10 minutes.

Review by Steve Murray, Cox News Service

Review: What lies beneath “What Lies Beneath” is a script that could have come from a 1970s TV movie. Narratively old-fashioned, but boosted by star performances and suspenseful direction, it's a lovingly crafted throwback to haunted-house movies that relied more on suggestion and slowly building creepiness than over-the-top effects.

It's what last summer's god-awful remake of “The Haunting” might have been if it hadn't confused computer-imagery overkill with spooky storytelling.

“Beneath” could have been one of this summer's sneakier pleasures. It still might be to anybody who hasn't seen the trailers, in which DreamWorks gives away crucial plot points. You could call this the anti-“Sixth Sense,” in the ways the studio has sabotaged the surprise factor of its own movie.

This is especially disappointing when you watch “Beneath.” Clark Gregg's script kicks off with a sneaky story line that would have been ripe for use in the commercials: In scenes that borrow heavily from “Rear Window,” middle-aged wife and mother Claire (Michelle Pfeiffer) spies on the volatile new neighbors next door, convinced something terrible is going on there.

This turns out to be a decoy plot. But it could have gotten people into the theater without blowing all the twists of the main story that follows.

Harrison Ford plays Norman, Claire's workaholic professor husband, whose late father was himself an academic star. Trying to move out of Dad's shadow, Norman works late at the lab most nights, leaving Claire home alone. Only, she starts to suspect she isn't alone at all.

Doors open by themselves. Computers and radios switch on and off. The old, claw-foot bathtub upstairs fills to the rim when no one is around, and Claire sees - or thinks she sees - an eerie reflection on the water's surface.

Though DreamWorks has already done a bangup job of spoiling its own flick, let's stop here with plot details. Even if you've seen the commercials, “Beneath” is still highly watchable (if about 10 minutes too long).

The script encourages us to second-guess what's going on in the house, and in Claire's mind. Is the place really haunted, or is Claire responding to empty-nest syndrome (her daughter has just gone off to college), and maybe long-delayed resentment at Norman for the sacrifices she made when they married? Come to think of it, is Norman really at the lab every night? And what was that car crash Claire had a year ago all about?

The film has more emotional subtlety and behavioral observation than your typical screamer. In one amusing scene, Claire delays telling a therapist (the sympathetic Joe Morton) the real reason people want her to get her head examined. And at dinner with another couple, director Robert Zemeckis captures the way men talk to each other, and women do the same simultaneously, dividing the table by gender.

But to succeed “Beneath” has to build suspense, and here Zemeckis shows a good deal of skill. Instead of speeding things up at the film's climax, he slows things down almost to excruciating effect, following Claire through a series of tense predicaments.

Ford is top-billed, but it's Pfeiffer's movie and she's very good. The camera rarely leaves her, tracking her for minutes at a time as she tiptoes through the house. (Some of these scenes recall the great, nerve-wracking finale of “Diabolique”; the movie also throws in echoes of “Fatal Attraction,” “Psycho” and Ingmar Bergman's “Hour of the Wolf.”)

Sure, “Beneath” relies too much on tired old “boo” clichés: Too many times somebody turns around and - gasp - someone else has snuck up behind them. Or that sudden movement is merely the family pet. But after the computer-generated tricks of “Forrest Gump” and “Contact,” you can almost feel Zemeckis savoring the cheesiness of these devices. He knows we're onto him, but that we want him to keep goosing us.

What's most fun about the movie isn't the movie itself, but the audience's “Scream”-wise reaction - laughing nervously in advance at an obvious setup, but yelping anyway when it it plays through as expected (or sometimes, not). There's nothing new about “What Lies Beneath.” It doesn't surprise like “Sixth Sense,” or shake up the genre like “The Blair Witch Project.” But sometimes, an old-fashioned ghost story is good enough.