I always believe that the secret of a movie that truly sends shivers down your spine, is that you don’t actually see blood, gore and mayhem (A very respectable firm of lawyers they’d make too).
It’s not the slash and bash, ‘limbs hanging on by a thread’ kind of film that gets to me, but the likes of Hitchcock’s classics ‘Psycho’ and ‘The Birds’. More recently, Director John Carpenter has come up with ‘The Fog’ and of course the original ‘Halloween’.
Well, Robert Zemeckis has produced a film that I rate as highly – at least – as any of the above for sheer terror and ‘jump right out of your seat’ chills.
Zemeckis – better known for the likes of ‘Back to the Future’ and ‘Forrest Gump’ – teams up Harrison Ford and Michelle Pfeiffer and husband and wife Norman and Claire Spencer. Ford’s character is a brilliant research scientist who has recently moved back to his ‘alma mater’ with former brilliant cellist, Pfeiffer and her daughter Caitlin (played by Katherine Towne).
Things start to happen after Caitlin goes off to College and leaves mum alone in the big rambling house by the ocean. Claire becomes concerned about her neighbour, Mary, who she believes has been murdered by her husband. She begins to see ‘ghosts’ and even accuses the husband, face to face, of murder.
I won’t reveal the major details of the plot from now on, but the trail leads this way and that, focing Pfeiffer to question her sanity, but in reality the truth lies rather closer to home.
Pfeiffer and Ford are both brilliant in the lead roles and Zemeckis – aided by a soundtrack that is menacingly similar to that of ‘Psycho’ – keeps the plot boiling and there are twists and turns aplenty. I had more than one occasion, watching the film, when I had the shivers and the guy next to me in the cinema literally jumped out of his seat twice!
For the infamous ‘Psycho’ shower scene, read ‘Bath scene’ in this film. If you have an aversion to water and watch this film, please take your water wings with you AND don’t use a hair dryer in the bath!
‘Classic’ is a much overused word these days when it comes to most things, but I feel that this movie will, in years to come, go down as such and the performances by the lead duo will rank amongst their best work. Zemeckis, I’m sure, must pay homage the master of suspense and the classic spinechiller, in Alfred Hitchcock, but he in no way comes up short himself.
This is unquestionably a MUST SEE Chiller. Don’t expect a ‘Friday 13th/Texas Chains Saw’ type film – this one is most definitely for ‘thinking adults’ and I’ll just add…DON’T GO NEAR THE WATER.