What Lies Beneath

What Lies Beneath is a wild and almost overwrought thriller, which will make your hairs stand on end and your spine tingle.

Its credentials are dazzling: the idea was Spielberg's; the direction was by Zemeckis and the stars are Ford and Pfeiffer.

The finished product does not betray its makers.

Claire is a housewife who leads a seemingly idyllic life - until she starts to see ghosts of missing young girls.

Her husband stays at the office increasingly late and she's just waved her only daughter off to university.

The more time she spends alone in the New England house, the more frightened she becomes.

At first she thinks the strange occurrances are related to the odd neighbours, but the more tricks her mind plays on her, the more disturbed she becomes and the more convinced she is that she's stumbled across a case of murder.

Intensely psychologically disturbing, this film explores the eerie ghosts deep down in everyone's minds and our insecurities about even those who we love and know well.

No masterpiece, this film doesn't tell us anything new, but it's sophisticated, and the script and cinematography never belie its star-studded production team.

The genre of thriller/ horror is often over-used but rarely has it come this close to emulating the master with such perfection - Hitchcock would have been proud.

Zemeckis obviously loves this game and plays it to the hilt: close-ups of baths and plug holes; an abundance of vulnerable blondes and the excessive use of mirrors, body bags and blood.

Great fun and real chills combine to make this a murder mystery with a twist, and an in-depth exploration into the mind of an ordinary woman, who uncovers an extraordinary situation.

The mystery builds and unfolds in a completely captivating manner and takes all sorts of different forms of revealing itself, bit by bit.

The unravelling tactics are never old or over-used and will take you by surprise at each turn.

It touches on the supernatural and is punctuated by some moments of black humour.

Great entertainment - but don't watch alone.

Natalie Stone