What Lies Beneath, or, People Who Live in Glass Houses Shouldn’t Do Rear Window

It’s still early September and I’m already in a Halloween mood. I always assumed that I’ve been getting an earlier and earlier start every year because I’ve been immersed in theme park-adjacent cultural awareness, and they always start Halloween in August. But I think it’s also just part of the residual energy of the San Fernando Valley, somehow, and people want it to be spooky season year round. And it’s been a rainy Labor Day weekend, where I’ve been feeling intensely in the mood to sit inside and watch some scary movies. So I decided to soft-launch Spooktober 2026 with a suspense thriller from 2000 that everyone has seen except me, What Lies Beneath. The movie stars Michelle Pfeiffer (Grease 2) as a musician-turned-homemaker, married to an overworked geneticist played by Harrison Ford (The Possessed) and dealing with having to send their only daughter off to college, and having a big house mostly to herself. It’s directed by Robert Zemeckis (Used Cars), and it feels very much like…