What Lies Beneath--Falls Beneath Your Expectations

                Let me start out by saying whatever Michelle Pfeiffer is involved in, I am 100% on board. She’s a classy lady with a lot of talent who occasionally winds up in a not-so-great film.

But I will forever love "Cool Rider"

But overall, she’s a big star and my favorite Cat Woman, so coupled with Harrison Ford, I went into this film optimistically. I should not have gone into this film optimistically. What starts out as an edgy domestic thriller gets cliché and bad very, very quickly. Let’s break it down.

                Michelle Pfeiffer plays a softer character than her usual role as a mom whose daughter is moving off to college. She soon begins to see things, doors opening by themselves and picture frames falling off shelves. She chalks it up to “empty nest syndrome” and her husband (Ford), a notable doctor, encourages her to forget all the nonsense.

                But soon Michelle Pfeiffer (whose name is Claire, but will always be Michelle Pfeiffer in my eyes) suspects the woman next door has been murdered by her husband and is now a ghost seeking justice. When Michelle Pfeiffer and her best friend Jody do a séance with a toy Ouija board, the ghost reveals its initials to be MF (at which I immediately thought the ghost was being vulgar, but actually the neighbor’s name was Mary Fuer).

                Michelle Pfeiffer rushes to her doctor-husband’s lab in a tither, suddenly spotting her neighbor, Mr. F (shame on you if you don't get this joke). She accuses him of killing his wife, at which point his wife appears at his side, very much alive.

                So long story short, Michelle Pfeiffer finds out the ghost is actually a coed named Madison who had an affair with her husband, Harrison Ford. And here is when the movie stops being good.

                Until this point I was invested in a twist ending or a surprise thrill. But cheating husband with cute college student? Kills her because she threatens to go to the dean? That’s every episode of Law and Order: SVU without the cool DUN DUN noise.

                So Harrison Ford, who has been a caring a supporting husband and stepfather the entire film goes crazy and tries to drown Michelle Pfeiffer by sedating her and laying her in a filling bathtub. But Madison’s ghost appears, startling Harrison Ford so he slips backwards, hitting his head on the sink, going unconscious. Michelle Pfeiffer recovers from the drug just in time to escape the bathroom.

                Of course the phone lines have been cut and this movie is old, so there’s no 4G. Michelle Pfeiffer steals their dinosaur cell phone and gets into a car, searching for service (because all of a sudden the neighbors she has been obsessing over don’t have a house phone).

                Surprise! Her husband ambushes her in the car, and a ghost appears on a bridge, causing Michelle Pfeiffer to swerve into the water; the same lake where her husband pushed Madison’s car with Madison inside the night he killed her.

                Their submerged car hits against Madison’s submerged car and her corpse comes alive trapping the doctor, allowing Michelle Pfeiffer to escape. She is seen later placing a single red rose on Madison’s grave, surrounded by white snow. THE END.

                Here is where the movie really doesn’t click with me. It starts out with great potential. Michelle Pfeiffer has amnesia and suffered a major car accident a year ago; later you learn she caught her husband and Madison together and, upset, drove into a tree. But with an amnesiac being haunted by a ghost, the plot had so much more potential than a professor sleeping with a college student. Because that’s just season four of Gilmore Girls. So in the end, the movie fell flat of my expectations and simply felt rushed and boring. Yet nevertheless, sets a great model for the water ghost genre of horror.

                In the common horror film, two people sense ghosts before anyone else: artists and women. The protagonist in this film is both, a famous cellist and a female. Her husband, who reasons that there is nothing supernatural in the house, is a doctor and a man. In one pivitol scene, you see the couple on a double date wherein the two wives both believe wholeheartedly in the haunting while the men discuss business.

                But a more prevalent theme is promiscuity. In Gothic works, the woman is repressed, often sexually (as in most Poe works). And in Friday the 13^th movies, the girls getting it on are the girls not getting out alive. And in this film, there are more sex scenes than in Debbie Does Dallas. Michelle Pfeiffer wears white and beige through the entire film, except in one scene where she is possessed by Madison and is wearing a red dress. She has sex only with her husband and is a kept housewife. Madison has no father and latches to a married man, having a sordid affair. And she ends up dead. I don’t think it’s by accident.

Let me slip into something a little more...creepy.

                Water ghosts. In water ghost stories, the victim dies in water and often seeks revenge; they drown their victims. This story is no different, except Madison’s spirit employs the help of her victim’s wife. But hey, solidarity sister. That’s what keeps Madison from holding Michelle Pfeiffer under in the end.

                The movie was not altogether unwatchable. It has a lot of potential for analysis, but not a lot of potential for wowing an audience. This film is not recommended.