Not even Michelle Pfeiffer’s legitimately terrific performance can save this schizophrenic movie. The script feels like 4 different thrillers mashed together into a weird pulp in which the only consistency is the dreary and subdued tone. Oddly, the film is most compelling in it’s first 30 minutes, before you could claim anything interesting is actually happening, because Zemeckis does such a great job establishing character, setting, and tone. It’s because of this strength that the rest of the film feels like such a betrayal. What Lies Beneath can’t decide if it’s a Poltergeist rip-off, a Fatal Attraction rip-off, a Rear Window rip-off, a Gaslight rip-off…plot points are set up and abandoned with such fickleness it’s hard to keep your interest around the third time it happens.
Which isn’t to say it’s entirely ineffective. As I mentioned, Pfeiffer is really terrific, somehow crafting a three-dimensional character out of the lousy script. And there’s a sequence involving a bathtub (one of many) that is way more tense and scary than anything in Diabolique. But it’s in service of nothing. For me, it’s most interesting as one last throwback to the days when a film like this could be one of the top ten successful films of the year C-
Martha Marcy Nash and Young 