Claire Spencer (Michelle Pfeiffer), a former cellist, and her scientist husband Norman (Harrison Ford) live together in a large lakeside house in Vermont. Claire is fragile: still recovering from a bad car accident, her daughter has only just left home for college, leaving her and Norman alone for the first time. When Claire overhears violent arguments between her next door neighbours, she fears for the safety of the wife (Miranda Otto). When the wife then disappears, and supernatural phenomena begin to occur around her house, Claire grows to fear her neighbour has been murdered – and is now haunting her home.

There’s no point disguising the fact that Robert Zemeckis’ What Lies Beneath (2000) is straightforward pulp entertainment. The entire film works as a Hitchcock pastiche given a supernatural makeover. The ghostly elements feel very much of their time, coming hot on the heels of films like The Sixth Sense and Stir of Echoes (both 1999) but lacking the depth of either. In truth What Lies Beneath exists almost as a technical exercise: the screenplay is simple, the locations and cast are limited, and the only area of invention for the whole picture is in how Zemeckis and cinematographer Don Burgess shoot the thing. The film was swiftly assembled when Zemeckis had to wait several months in the middle of shooting Cast Away (2000), so that star Tom Hanks could safely lose weight for the second half of that film. Clearly the director craved some sort of diversion – that is what Beneath represents for the viewer. It is filmmaking as candy: a short, simple treat to be consumed between more substantial works.

This is not to disregard the film completely. Truth be told it is a very slickly told and presented slice of entertainment. It is the sort of film that does exactly what it claims to do in its marketing: a mystery that looks impressive, is a little bit spooky, and comes with a standard set of twists, turns, and surprises. None of the mysteries involved are particularly surprising, but then neither is the film structured for the audience to anything more than come along for the ride.

Michelle Pfeiffer, always an immensely talented actor, dominates the film effectively. Her performance matches the heightened tone of the script and the photography. Ford, always a fairly laconic performer, is therefore well-matched as Pfeiffer’s calm, bottled-up husband – more interested in his latest academic paper than whatever ghosts or spirits she claims to be seeing. Honestly every other character in the film is largely sidelined in favour of a two-hander: quicker to shoot, and therefore able to be produced in the narrow margin between Cast Away‘s two sections.

If there is a stand-out element to the film, it is Burgess’ photography. Hitchcock references abound, quoting from various famous productions in subtle and not-so-subtle ways. Alan Silvestri’s Herrmann-like score is definitely one of the latter. Beneath also continues a trend Zemeckis started with Contact (1996), using digital effects to make shots and angles that immerse the viewer emotionally but don’t actual make much physical sense. It is worth noting a climactic tracking shot that appears to push the camera right through the floor of Claire and Norman’s house. It seemed to be somewhat of a fashion in Hollywood to undertake this kind of visual trickery: it gets repeated and exaggerated immensely just two years later in David Fincher’s Panic Room (2002), which famously pushed a camera angle through the handle of a coffee mug.

Come to What Lies Beneath with the same sense of play with which it was made, and it is an enjoyable diversion. I tend to refer to these sorts of films as confections: sweet, tasty, and pleasurable to consume, but you wouldn’t want to base your entire diet around them.