The steps to horror

10/2000
Cinema Magazine
(translated by YG)

Harrison Ford and Michelle Pfeiffer reach new summits of fear in "What Lies Beneath". On paths that Alfred Hitchcock set.

Even horror has its habits, and here, too, it starts as always with a vague suspicion. Is everything alright in the neighbor's house? The curiosity of the bored housewife Claire slowly becomes an obsession: Should there have occurred a murder? What sets out as a reminiscence to "Rear Window", soon appears to be an anthology of motives of the classical psychological thriller - especially of those that were staged by the master of this genre: Alfred Hitchcock.

Should Robert Zemeckis, who shaped great entertainment by using the most advanced computer techniques in movies like "Roger Rabbit" and "Forrest Gump", have worked looking backwards while doing his new movie - instead of "Back to the Future" now forward to the past? Yes and no.On the one hand Robert Zemeckis said that he had a movie in mind that looks like a work of Alfred Hitchcock if he had had the most modern digital technology at hand. On the other hand "What Lies Beneath" is a psychological thriller, and their first - and oldest - rule is: nothing is the way it appears to be, and seemingly familiar things can turn to horrifying ones any moment here. Already the original title of the movie is as ambiguous as programmatic for the genre: "What Lies Beneath" - what lies beneath the surface is the horror, in this case the shadows of the past - and they are lies that poison the present.

By referring to Alfred Hitchcock, Zemeckis raises very high expectations for his movie, because this name has become the trademark for refined suspense cinema. But Hitchcock, who worked almost exclusively within the genre of the psychological thriller, did not just perfectly satisfy the audience's need to be entertained, he also pushed this genre to its limits again and again - and set new ones. With his 1960 movie "Psycho", the era of the modern horror movie began: no exotic half-creatures like vampires or werewolves spread the fear, no, now it grew in the middle of the heart of America, right in the family. And the murder under the shower in "Psycho" is probably the movie scene cited most often in movie history.

But to cite a single scene is easier than shooting a movie that is a tribute to the great model, at least if you're not satisfied with a 1:1 copy like Gus Van Sant with his remake of "Psycho". Each psychological thriller plays a game with the expectations of the audience. When, in "What Lies Beneath", Claire tries to find out with a binocular what is going on in the house next-door, and the suspicion that the husband murdered his wife is growing in her, Zemeckis leads us on the wrong track. The real horror for Claire, as we soon learn, lurks inside her own four walls.

But this is just the first surprising turn, each further one opens up a new dimension of the story. As if you were peeling an onion, you only get to the heart of it all step by step, understanding more and more of the connections. And so suspecting the neighbor of murder gains a prohetic character as time goes by. But until the real culprit is exposed, the audience has already suspected everybody except for the film projectionist. Even Harrison Ford as Claire's husband Norman.

Almost unsympathetically brusque, Ford shows a hitherto unknown side of himself here. Comparable to Cary Grant in "Notorious" (??) who drives Ingrid Bergman into the bed of an enemy agent or to James Stewart who, in his obsesion, wants to model Kim Novak after the picture of his dead lover in "Vertigo". Concerning the relationship between the man and the woman in the center of his movie, Zemeckis proves to be as consequent as Hitchcock.

"Shadow of Doubt" (??), this title of a Hitchcock thriller hits the heart of Zemeckis' work. When the story turns to a real ghost story - with doors opening and shutting by themselves and bath-tubs being filled with water as if by an invisible hand -, then Claires starts to doubt her sanity. is she supposed to become the victim of a refined conspiracy like Henri-Georges Clouzot set up in his movie "The Devilish"? Zemeckis does pay tribute to his still fear-inspiring bath-tub scene anyway.

The knowledge of the rules of the classical psychological thriller can be seen in each scene of "What Lies Beneath": With its audience, it plays a refined game between uncovering and covering, between the pleasure of the forbidden look and the moment of punishment for it. Harmless objects start to develop their own life, each turn of the story tightens the screw when heroine Claire feels helpless in front of the horror. And because the movie is told consequently from her perspective, the viewer feels the same way.

The perfect technique that the audience knows from other Zemeckis movies works especially in the ghost scenes. But it's not the technique that marks the difference to the psychological thrillers of the past decades, but the individual soft way in which Zemeckis almost hypnotizes his audience: deliberately long shots and the slowed-down speed in telling the story lend this psychological thriller its quality. And they give the viewer the time to give in to the memories of classical moments of cinema angst. But don't think you would know who is the murderer. Because nothing is the way it seems to be. Or is it? Because that's rule number two ...

Fair Use Notice

This site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. Harrison Ford Web is making such material available in an effort to promote research. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.