Reel Critics

Hitchcock, this ain’t

Gabrielle Reynolds is a prop buyer for Walt Disney Imagineering in

Glendale and is married to fellow critic Patrick Reynolds.

Foreshadowing and suspenseful music. Mysterious goings-on next door.

Dark, unexplained looks.

Clues, clues, clues!

Unfortunately, the clues don’t point to the story in “What Lies

Beneath” as much as they do to the Hitchcock classics and other recent

thrillers that are being ripped off.

Alan Silvestri cheats his way through a thin reworking of Bernard

Herrmann’s “Psycho” score, and his music gives the heaviest cues as to

when we are supposed to be scared in this manipulative melodrama.

Plot points are so obvious and so evenly spaced, it is not possible to

be held in suspense. Much more fun than the film is the reaction of the

audience members, who whisper the twists to each other before they

happen: “He’s not dead! He’s going to grab her!” They scream at the

countless visual pop-ups -- then laugh at themselves for screaming.

Miss it.

Scary movie fare

Patrick Reynolds, an actor, lives in Glendale with his wife and fellow

critic, Gabrielle Reynolds.

If you’ve never seen a scary or suspenseful film of any kind before,

you might be entertained by this film. For the rest of us not living in

caves, it was one very predictable movie. Nothing original or new. Every

plot twist was telegraphed a mile away.

There were many sudden appearances by entities and such that were

punctuated by loud music cues. It was right out of “Scary Film Making

101.” Sadly, the parts weren’t much of a stretch for Harrison and

Michelle, either. I was not scared or amused.