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Release Date:
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July 25th, 2000
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Availability:
Regular U.S. release.
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Filmtracks Recommends:
Buy it... if you are prepared to appreciate a technically adept
adaptation of Bernard Herrmann's score from Psycho for the horror
sequences in What Lies Beneath.
Avoid it... if the surprisingly and disappointingly mundane and
sparse orchestration of Alan Silvestri's suspense cues for the first
half of the film cannot compensate for those snappy moments of Herrmann
inspiration later on.
Filmtracks Editorial Review:
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| | Silvestri | |
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What Lies Beneath: (Alan Silvestri) Was this film
supposed to serious or was it meant to be satire? A film like What
Lies Beneath proves that it truly doesn't matter if you place a
director like Robert Zemeckis behind the camera and actors like Harrison
Ford and Michelle Pfeiffer in front of it; if your screenplay is
atrocious, then the film better rely on the humorous antics of the
actors in order to survive. Unfortunately, newcomer Clark Gregg's
screenplay for this film was so uninspired and predictable that critics
universally twisted in their seats... not out of fright, but out of
boredom. Ford and Pfeiffer are a wealthy couple who move to a mansion on
the edge of a Vermont lake, and, just on cue, a whole slew of ghostly
things start happening. One of the only redeeming aspects of What
Lies Beneath was an attempt by Zemeckis to raise small tributes to
the master of horror, Alfred Hitchcock. Some of these references were
built into the script, with some elements stolen from Psycho and
Rear Window, while others involved the typical flair for camera
angles and movement. Another element of the film that was saturated with
Hitchcock flavor was Alan Silvestri's score, which owes so much to
Bernard Herrmann that it's hard to refer to the music from What Lies
Beneath as being an original work. The collaboration between
Zemeckis and Silvestri has been extremely fruitful over the years, but
What Lies Beneath was their first horror venture together. They
were reportedly working on two projects concurrently in 2000, with
What Lies Beneath not even wrapped up in post-production before
the two began looking forward to production on the more popularly
anticipated fall release, Cast Away (despite the latter film
containing only a few minutes of score material). Perhaps Zemeckis and
Silvestri already knew what film and score critics were going to say
about What Lies Beneath, and you're about to hear a
representative dose of that criticism in the words below.
It was immediately recognized when What Lies
Beneath was finally released that the music for the film, at its
best, alternated between rather mundane, stock, horror underscore and
wildly obvious tributes to Herrmann's score from Psycho. As for
the eerie parts of the underscore, segments that are more likely to be
described as being in tune with Silvestri's own styles, there could be
comparisons made to Jerry Goldsmith's concurrent Hollow Man.
What's surprising about What Lies Beneath is that Silvestri so
rarely flies on autopilot, and the fact that he produced such an
uninteresting score for this project is more representative of the kind
of predictability from which Goldsmith has suffered through his series
of equally questionable projects through the 1990's. The suspense cues
in What Lies Beneath are a succession of cliched horror ideas,
using a regular studio orchestra to provide one or two moderately
cohesive motifs while meandering through each section of the ensemble
alone for extended sequences. Only halfway through the album release
does Silvestri begin to open the doors of horror with an effective
crescendo in "Forbidden Fruit." From there, we hear a hint of James
Horner's dense ideas from Aliens, though most of the material
owes significant inspiration to Herrmann's Psycho. Entire
30-second flashes of action --once What Lies Beneath turns from
suspense to horror-- can be attributed to both the preludes to
Psycho and, to a lesser extent, Vertigo. The use of brass
and timpani for the more rhythmic chase sequences will remind heavily of
Torn Curtain. The praise that you did hear associated with the
score at the time of its release was mostly directed at these moments of
Herrmann imitation, and while Silvestri obviously did it intentionally
(and likely as a result of direction from the filmmakers), it's hard to
get the impression that there's anything truly fresh in What Lies
Beneath. That's a surprising statement considering how unique
Silvestri's scores typically sound, especially in orchestration. On
album, this was one of Varèse Sarabande's later notable "under-30
minute" products, and as such, there really is no reason, beyond the
technical intrigue of hearing Herrmann's music adapted, to buy this
score. **
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Viewer Ratings and Comments:
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• 1. Main Title (1:12)
• 2. Panic Attack (2:58)
• 3. Ouija Board (1:14)
• 4. You Know (2:40)
• 5. Forbidden Fruit (5:31)
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• 6. I Opened the Door (2:47)
• 7. The Getaway (2:44)
• 8. Reunited (3:53)
• 9. End Credits (6:33)
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Insert includes no extra information about the score or film.
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