What Lies Beneath

If you need a good reason to see this film, then you have to look no further than the cast and crew list. Catwoman and Indiana Jones have joined with Mr Back to the Future for a fright fest of the highest degree.

If you're cine-illiterate and therefore didn't understand any of that then I will translate. Screen legends Michelle Pfeiffer and Harrison Ford have joined up with Robert Zemeckis for a homage to the Hitchcock style of films, where your insides get ripped out and twisted into a double knot with fear.

The famous duo play the happily married couple Claire and Dr Norman Spencer (never thought Harrison Ford would be called Norman!!) who spend most of their time shagging when they're not spying on the neighbours from their bedroom window.

At least they were happily married until Claire starts having strange dreams of dead people in her bathtub and generally gets the heebie jeebies into herself with candles, Ouija boards and the like. After toying with the possibility of a dead neighbour (one of the ones they were spying on), Claire gets more and more involved with the case of missing girl Madison Elizabeth Frank, and, terrified, has to watch her life, marriage and mind gradually begin to fall apart as the hallucinations and terror becomes all the more real and human.

Borrowing heavily from films such as Psycho (the use of bathrooms) and Rear Window (the whole neighbour-spying thing), Zemeckis has produced a film that preys on your nerves slowly before wrenching them apart in an action filled climax. Both Ford and Pfeiffer are good as the central couple, with a sizzling chemistry evident from the start. And there is good support from the characters' friends and neighbours, who all help to provide clues and the occasional red herring.

If you have a nervous disposition or an aversion to water then you probably wouldn't be advised to watch this film but if you don't, and like to be scared silly, then it's perfect, though it may very well put you off baths (which could cause a problem if Psycho put you off showers!). Ultimately though, this is enjoyable horror hokum, scaring your pants off and making you think twice about what you think you know about people.