Harrison Ford's Forgotten 2000 Horror Movie Is Streaming On Netflix

Harrison Ford and Michelle Pfeiffer in a Hitchcock-esque thriller? What more could you want? "What Lies Beneath" saw the two screen legends top-line a supernatural thriller that was a decent enough success upon its 2000 debut, but has gone mostly overlooked in the years since. Luckily, Netflix has the film, so audiences can decide for themselves whether it deserves to be remembered more fondly.

The movie started life as a treatment written by Sarah Kernochan based on what she claimed was a real paranormal experience. Clark Gregg (of "Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D" fame) then made changes to Kernochan's treatment and developed it into a full screenplay before Robert Zemeckis was brought in to direct. The "Forrest Gump" filmmaker actually shot "What Lies Beneath" in between working on the much more successful, Tom Hanks-led "Cast Away." While his Pfeiffer and Ford-fronted thriller didn't have a "Forrest Gump" reunion to boost its profile, it did have those two equally venerable stars who gave their best to a movie that, according to critics, perhaps wasn't deserving of their talents.

The contemporary reviews for "What Lies Beneath" were not all that positive, with critics attacking the script in particular for a lack of originality and general clumsiness. But there's actually a lot to like about the movie, which aims to subvert expectations and in many cases succeeds quite well. It also showcases Harrison Ford taking a big risk with his career, and it certainly made a decent enough profit, grossing $288 million worldwide on a $90 million budget. So, if you fancy taking a look and seeing what audiences liked so much, then now's the time to stream "What Lies Beneath" on Netflix.

"What Lies Beneath" stars Harrison Ford and Michelle Pfeiffer as husband and wife Norman and Claire Spencer. The pair lives in a lakeside home in Vermont, where Claire Spencer, a former cellist, is still dealing with the residual effects of a car accident a year prior. Her relationship with Norman, a professor, becomes strained by the departure of their daughter, Caitlin (Katharine Towne), for college, but what really pushes things to their limit is the fact that Claire becomes convinced their house is haunted.

The increasingly isolated Claire begins to hear strange voices and even sees a young woman in the home. She's understandably terrified, but Norman remains unconvinced and dismissive of his wife's concerns, much like the dad in "Hereditary" who ends up being torched to a crisp. Ford's character thankfully avoids such a painful end, but he's setting himself up for something similar, especially since hanging over all of this is the fact that Norman cheated on his wife some time ago, and Claire is unaware of the betrayal.

There's also a bit of "Rear Window" suspense built into this mostly forgotten supernatural thriller, with Claire becoming convinced her new neighbor, Mary Feur (Miranda Otto), was murdered by her husband. Indeed, "What Lies Beneath" is essentially Robert Zemeckis' Alfred Hitchcock riff. But the director also subverts many of the tropes established by that titan of cinema. Hitchcock established what Brian De Palma called a "cinematic grammar," which pretty much every filmmaker has used in some way, whether they knew it or not. With "What Lies Beneath," Zemeckis tried to apply that grammar to a supernatural horror, and it makes for an interesting watch even if critics weren't all that impressed.

With "What Lies Beneath," critics seemed to want a more straightforward emulation of Alfred Hitchcock in the vein of a De Palma film, but Robert Zemeckis was trying something different. He applied Hitchcockian techniques to a movie that wasn't actually all that Hitchcockian in its premise — mainly because it was a ghost story with actual ghosts rather than a movie with a twist revealing all the spooky occurrences as being engineered by humans.

Roger Ebert certainly felt that way. In his two-star review, the critic wrote that Hitchcock would not have made "What Lies Beneath" without insisting on rewrites "to remove the supernatural and explain the action in terms of human psychology." But 25 years later, we can perhaps give Zemeckis the credit he deserves for not merely making the film Hitchcock would have made. The director was clearly trying to add to his forebear's legacy rather than emulate it, as several moments in the movie demonstrate (particularly the reveal that undermines the whole "Rear Window" comparison). As such, "What Lies Beneath" is well worth a watch, especially if you go in expecting the supernatural stuff.

It's also a movie from a strange time in Harrison Ford's career when he was struggling to figure out what he represented in Hollywood, a full decade after his last Indiana Jones movie. Sandwiched between the poorly received "Random Hearts" (1999) and the similarly unsuccessful "K-19: The Widowmaker" in 2002 (which Ford thinks is underrated), "What Lies Beneath" was a rare early 2000s commercial success for the actor, and he's good in it!

Aside from Netflix, the film is also available for free on Pluto, which is catching up to the similarly impressive free streamer Tubi as one of the best streaming services going.