What Lies Beneath

Director: Robert Zemeckis

2000 / 130min / 35mm

Filmed during a lengthy production break on his Cast Away of the same year, Zemeckis’s What Lies Beneath is in many regards a fitting companion piece to the director’s better-known Hanks vehicle as a study in isolation—here, the gnawing loneliness is that of a Vermont housewife (Michelle Pfeiffer) who, her daughter newly off to college and her relationship with scientist husband Harrison Ford strained at best, finds herself increasingly fixated on the possibility that their new neighbor has murdered his wife. While it’s evident that Zemeckis has put in his time with Hitchcock and Clouzot, he’s not content with mere homage, and his film’s venture into supernatural terrain is a distinctive—and telling—departure from his masters.

Distributor: Paramount

Part of In Her Shadow