WHAT LIES BENEATH

STARRING HARRISON FORD, MICHELLE PFEIFFER, AMBER VALLETTA DIRECTED BY ROBERT ZEMECKIS

BUZZ-O-METER 6

WHAT’S THE BIG DEAL? We could tell you, but then we’d have to kill you.

When Zemeckis embarked on his psychological thriller, he got a bit of Vertigo. ”I said, what would Alfred Hitchcock do if he had computer graphics?” the director says. ”We’re trying to make it really elegant — it’s not a slasher movie.” What it is exactly is difficult to say, because Zemeckis is trying desperately to keep the details shrouded (Ford and Pfeiffer declined to be interviewed because of the film’s secrecy). What Zemeckis will confess is the following: Pfeiffer suspects that husband Ford, a college prof, was having an affair with a woman who killed herself. Pfeiffer then begins to believe that the ghostly girl (Valletta) is haunting their home and is out to harm them. Like The Sixth Sense, it promises to be a sly, zigzaggy story — one suggested by none other than DreamWorks head Steven Spielberg (actor-writer Clark Gregg then elaborated on Spielberg’s idea in his screenplay). And while the film will sport computer effects — as did Zemeckis’ Forrest Gump and Death Becomes Her — the director insists that’s not the draw. ”The spectacle of this movie is these two giant movie stars in a departure from what we’ve seen them do,” he says. ”It’s got spectacular chemistry.” And avid interest: The Internet is already spooking up theories and ”scoops” about the film, much to the director’s chagrin. ”In a world of constant information, hopefully that doesn’t mean it’s impossible to make a movie like this,” Zemeckis says. ”That would be criminal.” (July 21)