Glossy ghosts and domestic dread, but the water’s not quite as deep as it thinks.

Robert Zemeckis’ What Lies Beneath drips with old-school atmosphere, evoking the glossy, suspense-laden style of Hitchcock with a supernatural twist. Armed with a star-powered cast—Michelle Pfeiffer as the increasingly unmoored Claire and Harrison Ford in a rare villain-adjacent role—the film plays like a prestige haunted house tale crossed with a psychological thriller. There are foggy lake views, mysterious messages, bathtubs that fill by themselves, and a growing sense that something truly rotten lies beneath the Spencer household’s perfect exterior.

Pfeiffer anchors the story with a strong, emotional performance, capturing the creeping dread and loneliness of a woman whose reality is beginning to splinter. Ford, meanwhile, slowly unpacks a more sinister persona, playing against his traditional heroic image. But for all its technical polish and deliberate pacing, What Lies Beneath never quite escapes the feeling that it’s a greatest-hits collection of ghost story tropes. Zemeckis stages a few solid set pieces—particularly a bathtub scene that remains tense even today—but the script stumbles into predictability, and the final revelations don’t pack the punch they should.

The Prognosis:

What Lies Beneath is a classy, mid-budget thriller that flirts with greatness but ultimately gets bogged down by cliché. It wants to say something about guilt and repression, about the fractures hidden in a “perfect” marriage, but it’s more comfortable delivering stylish scares than true depth. Still, as a slice of supernatural cinema from a director best known for time travel and talking cartoons, it remains a curious, if uneven, detour.

• Saul Muerte