by Blender Dumbass

Aka: J.Y. Amihud. A Jewish by blood, multifaceted artist with experience in film-making, visual effects, programming, game development, music and more. A philosopher at heart. An activist for freedom and privacy. Anti-Paternalist. A user of Libre Software. Speaking at least 3 human languages. The writer and director of the 2023 film "Moria's Race" and the lead developer of it's game sequel "Dani's Race".

Have you ever wondered what would Alfred Hitchcock do in the age of CGI and VFX? What kind of strange insane shorts he would come up with? Well Robert Zemeckis set out for himself a challenge to find out. He is notorious for using visual effects creatively. A lot of people might be familiar with the mirror shot he did in the film Contact. So something like trying to make a Hitchcockian thriller of the 21st century was just about the right kind of thing for Zemeckis.

The plot of the film is very Hitchcockian. If you find Hitchcock to be boring, you will find What Lies Beneath boring too. There are elements of films like "Rear Window" and "Vertigo" in this movie. I will not go into spoilers of this movie, because the movie holds on the plot development pretty much entirely. It's not a Europian drama, it is pretty much a plot driven movie. Though it is a drama. And in some aspect, it is a horror film. It has a ghost in it. And the movie doesn't shy away from having the ghost be just a real ghost.

Being a ghost story horror film this movie is so high quality it is insane. There is no bad acting or stupid decisions of the main leads. Quite the opposite. The actors Michelle Pfeiffer and Harrison Ford act their asses off. The directing of Zemeckis is so good it is hard to explain. This movie has a lot of impossible shots in it. It is showy, but that is kind of the point. For example, the camera might be looking at people from beneath objects, through stuff that should be solid. In one shot the camera clips through the floor and looks at the actors from under the floor. While they have a wooden floor. This was a hard visual effects shot with CGI floor. I mean Zemeckis went insane.

Being an actual student of Spielberg Zemeckis utilizes a lot of things he learned from Spielberg. For example the film is full of Spielberg oners. There is even a discussion that perhaps Zemeckis does Spielberg oners better than Spielberg himself. But I think then we are already looking at a kind of different breed of oners, called the Zemeckis oner. It is very similar to the Spielberg's oner, as in it is designed not to call attention to itself, but it is not as high energy as a Spielberg's oner. Spielberg tend to use oners in scenes where otherwise there would be a normal short-reverse-shot coverage. And a oner makes him not be bored on set. Zemeckis, it seems, uses oners for suspense. Which is a bit different.

When I was younger I remember giving up on this movie toward the beginning of it. I didn't get invested in it back then. It is a bit slow to open up. But if you give it it's time you will have a wonderful experience by the end. It is not a kind of movie a generation of Tik Tokers would watch. It doesn't start with a bang. It is very methodical. But it is very good.

Happy Hacking!!!


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