What Lies Beneath

What Lies Beneath is a 2000 American supernatural drama-horror film directed by Robert Zemeckis. It stars Harrison Ford and Michelle Pfeiffer as a well-to-do couple who experience a strange haunting that uncovers secrets about their past.

Plot
Norman Spencer, a university research scientist, is growing more and more concerned about his wife, Claire, a retired concert cellist who a year ago was involved in a serious auto accident, and who has just sent off her daughter Caitlin (Norman's stepdaughter) to college. Now, Claire reports hearing voices and witnessing eerie occurrences in and around their lakeside Vermont home, including seeing the face of a young woman reflected in water. An increasingly frightened Claire thinks the phenomena have something to do with the couple living next door, especially since the wife has disappeared without apparent explanation. At her husband's urging, Claire starts to see a therapist; she tells him she thinks the house is being haunted by a ghost. His advice? Try to make contact. Enlisting the help of her best friend, Jody, and a ouija board, Claire seeks to find out the truth of what lies beneath.

Trivia
Director Robert Zemeckis filmed this while production on Cast Away was shut down (so Tom Hanks could lose weight for his character). The date of birth on Madison Frank's missing persons' report is the birthday of Amber Valletta. Claire and Norman's sailboat is called "Good Genes". The house depicted in the film was used for day scenes only. It was torn down after filming because it didn't meet local building codes. The rooms were duplicated on an L.A. sound stage for night scenes. Michelle Pfeiffer and Harrison Ford were director Robert Zemeckis's first and only choices for the lead roles of Claire and Norman Spencer. The Crown Point Bridge appears throughout the film. It was located in Addison, Vermont, near D.A.R. State Park, very close to where the house was built. Filming closed the bridge for several days, causing problems for locals on both sides of Lake Champlain. The bridge closed permanently in October 2009, after an inspection revealed serious deterioration. It was demolished December 28, 2009, and is scheduled to be replaced by 2011. Michelle Pfeiffer stated in interviews that she was initially put off by all the technical aspects of the film, but eventually learned to embrace them. In the end the actress found the experience both educational and enjoyable. Michelle Pfeiffer stated in an interview that she used Drew Barrymore's method of projecting fear to help her get into character. Robert Zemeckis consciously shot What Lies Beneath in the style of Hitchcock, if he had access to digital technology. Also, the heroine of the film is a blonde, which was a common trademark of Alfred Hitchcock's. Robert Zemeckis had a replica of the house built. Five different versions of the bathroom set were constructed. So various parts of the same scene could be filmed at different times on opposite coasts. What Lies Beneath was the first film released under Zemeckis' production company ImageMovers. Throughout the film, Claire's (Michelle Pfeiffer) eyes are more grayish, although they are blue. In the scene where Claire allows Madison (Amber Veletta) to posses her body, her eyes are a darker shade of blue. This is because director Robert Zemeckis wanted to emphasize the eye color change from blue to green so as to make it easier to identify the "change of character". Contact lenses were used to make this feature-change. According to the script "What Lies Beneath" by Clark Gregg, Claire and Norman Spencer were different to the way they are portrayed in the movie. According to the screenplay, Claire and Norman smoked pot and didn't have as close a relationship as they did in the movie. Their characters were changed to make the movie fit in better with the type of motion picture setting. According to the original script "What Lies Beneath" by Clark Gregg, the scene with the Ouija board was started by Jody, who later ran out screaming after the séance had gotten a little out of hand. The scene was changed for the movie in order to show how much Claire gets into the encounter with the ghost, and to emphasize how much Claire thinks she is losing her mind as Jody isn't as scared as she later is

Box office
Budgeted at $100,000,000, What Lies Beneath was released on July 21, 2000 at #1 at the box office, grossing just under $30 million. It continued strongly throughout the summer of 2000, and ended up grossing over $155 million in the United States, and nearly $300 million worldwide.

Henry's copy
Henry has the 2000 VHS of this movie from DreamWorks Home Entertainment. It has previews of The Mexican, Shrek, Almost Famous, The Contender, The Legend of Bagger Vance, Bring it On, and Meet the Parents.