What Lies Beneath (2000)
It's many a year since I last rewatched this one and some of the details had started to fade, which is nice.
While I loved it when it first came out, my memory had started to remember the film as being full of schlocky jumps in lieu of genuine suspense. Turns out I was only half right. There are a number of jump scares accompanied by sudden bursts of loud music. But there's also a nice human story that drives it, with a great deal of time seeing smaller moments. There's also a nice brooding atmosphere that builds.
Character is lacking slightly, outside of Michelle Pfeiffer's character (and Harrison Ford's to a lesser extent). Other characters are purely functional, but since we don't spend much time with them it doesn't seem to matter.
It's probably best remembered as an attempt at an updated Hitchcock-type film and it's reasonably effective there. There are a couple of direct nods to Hitchcock films (a body apparently loaded into a car boot at night and a shower curtain being pulled down as a woman collapses out of the bathtub after an attack both evoke
Psycho. And there's the snooping on the neighbours element of
Rear Window). But it works well as an intriguing thriller even without these.
It really hit the spot for me, and it felt like an indulgent treat to have a matinee.
. No, the pace has to be just like it is. I think it's important because the story spans over a few years (Paul's upcoming training on Dune). Lynch's 1984 version of DUNE had moments of that but was too rushed in the last third. So I'm in for PART 2 despite my criticism. I was a bit underwhelmed that Villeneuve chose the same story highlights but in my view his storytelling was nevertheless superior to Lynch's one.
