Movies & Critics: What Lies Beneath

*Spoilers.* 

I often find that I agree with critics but not for the same reasons. 

I saw What Lies Beneath when it came out in theaters with Mike from the Video Club. I recently rewatched it. As I watched, I was surprised at how much I remembered. And I realized (1) the movie was better than I remembered; (2) the things I found wrong with it the first time, I found wrong with it the second time. 

That is, like many critics, I agree that the movie falls to pieces in the second half. However, I don't think it is because the script falls apart. The script works surprisingly well, including the characterization of the husband as bad guy. Both hours provide multiple subtle clues that the husband is not evil incarnate but rather a self-serving man who doesn't behave badly as long as he is getting what he wants (Agatha Christie does a fantastic job delineating this type of villain in Moving Finger). 

In fact, the overall psychology of the movie is quite effective. The wife, Claire, played excellently as always by Michelle Pfieffer, has just packed her daughter off to college. Issues/clues that may not have bothered her in the past have begun to come to her notice. She transfers her initial suspicions to the neighbors before slowly realizing that they belong in her own home. Her husband's constantly changing stories about his affair are believable: oh, this time, this is the full story.

What's the problem?

1. It's way too long at 2 hours (I do think this about most movies; there's a reason I mostly watch television episodes rather than movies: 45 minutes is the perfect length for everything). 

2. The supernatural element is too strong. 

This is Ebert's contention--"the problem with Zemeckis' desire to direct a Hitchcockian film was to involve the supernatural...which [Ebert] believes to be something Alfred Hitchcock himself would never have done"--and I mostly agree with that assessment though I do think that Hitchcock, like Conan Doyle with the Holmes' stories, used hints of the remarkable/unworldly to push people's buttons. 

I think a little bit of supernatural to get Claire unsettled works quite well. She then goes to see the therapist, played by Joe Morton, who encourages her to find out more about the "woman" she is "seeing." And she does. After all, there are plenty of clever clues for her to find.

3. Amnesia is an ineffective mystery trope. 

Amnesia is a fascinating trope. As a "clue" or plot point in a mystery, it is irritating since it negates the need for an investigation. She just needs to get her memory back! The restored memory becomes a facile solution--like all those criminals on Murder, She Wrote who get caught out due to a minor slip of the tongue made days earlier. A-ha, gotcha!

Instead of having a sudden memory of what went wrong in the first place, I would have Claire's character actually investigate. She figures out the affair and eventually the murder through a  remorseless need to know. She might not want to know but she needs to know. 

4. The ending. 

The movie should have ended in the bathroom. The very end of the movie--the car ride with boat and drive into the lake--is kind of dumb and not that effective. It also changes the heroine from Claire to a ghost/character we the audience have never met and feel no investment in. 

The bathroom scene is quite effective and would have ended the movie on a remarkable visual: Norman sprawled in blood across white tile. 

In addition, since I love mysteries and police procedurals, I would have found an police investigation about a billion times more interesting than the ride into the lake. Call the cops! Bring the other body up! Explain the sequence of events! 

 The reason I still don't blame the scriptwriter is that these are relatively easy issues to fix. Maybe a few tweaks. But the basic structure, characterizations, red herrings, and clever clues are already there--only the studio went for horror rather than suspense.