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Babes in Bookland
A podcast celebrating women's memoirs, one story at a time!
Babes in Bookland
BONUS: What Lies Beneath
What a treat! This month's Bonus Episode: What Lies Beneath is available for all! No subscription required :)
PLEASE if you have not watched the movie, do that first and then listen to this episode!
My friend, Priscilla, stops in for a deep dive into why this psychological thriller still stings: Michelle Pfeiffer’s nerve and nuance, Harrison Ford’s brilliant portrayal, and Robert Zemeckis’s love letter to Hitchcock that uses mirrors, windows, and water to make the ordinary feel unsafe.
We unpack the film’s design from the ground up, including a Nantucket-style lake house built to glow in daylight and brood at dusk, multiple bathroom sets engineered for those impossible angles, and CGI used with restraint: steam that writes, reflections that betray, a ghost that returns for one exquisite moment of justice. The camera starts at eye level and sinks lower as dread rises, and Alan Silvestri’s score threads anxiety through every door creak and bathtub ripple. It’s meticulous craft serving a clean, propulsive plot: seance to possession, repressed memory to reveal, paralytic serum to bathtub suffocation, bridge crash to lakebed truth.
At the heart is a theme that still resonates-- how a woman’s intuition gets minimized when her evidence looks like superstition. Claire’s haunted house becomes a map of gaslighting—neighbors who might be violent, a husband who “cares,” a past smudged by trauma. Step by step, the film tests what we believe and why, until the lake gives up what the living tried to hide. Whether you think the marketing blunted the twist or simply reframed the suspense, the story’s spine holds: nothing stays buried forever.
If you loved the breakdown, check out our Bonus Episodes (available on Patreon or Apple Podcasts) for more smart deep dives!
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Hello and welcome to your Babes and Bookland bonus episode. It's October, so we had to do a spooky movie. My friend Priscilla is here, and we're diving deep. This works on a few levels today, into what lies beneath. Hi P.
SPEAKER_01:Hello, my favorite horror movie, actually.
SPEAKER_00:Your favorite horror movie. Yes. Wow, that's that's like a really big claim.
SPEAKER_01:I know.
SPEAKER_00:I was going to ask you what's your favorite scary movie, but you just jumped right into it. Why? Why is this your favorite horror movie?
SPEAKER_01:I just really like psychological thrillers. And I wasn't sure that this would still be my favorite if I watched it more recently, but it still holds. I think story-wise, I just love I love this story. I mean, obviously, there's a lot more great horror series that I enjoy more. Okay. But this just feels like the classic for me. It's nostalgic.
SPEAKER_00:I agree. I actually think it holds up pretty well. It didn't get very good reviews initially. We're gonna get to that because I think that there is a reason for that. But I just want everyone out there to know that there is a horror movie that is like my friendship horror movie with Priscilla. And I asked her originally, I said, hey, it's October. I want you to be my deep dive. What horror movie was that, P? And why did you say no?
SPEAKER_01:It was the ring, and I refuse to watch that movie again. No, like never again. So scared of it still. And I feel like as I've gotten older, things scare me even more now, particularly something like that, where if I'm home by myself, I can't get that out of my head. So it's like, nope, I'm not re-watching that. We discussed it, it would be from memory. Otherwise, I'm not gonna re-watch it.
SPEAKER_00:You've only seen it once in the theaters when we saw it.
SPEAKER_01:I watched it in theaters and then we watched it a few times after that because I was so into horror and like just all things scary. I mean, when I was a kid, we wanted we did like Ouija boards and went to all the like horror spots where you try to put the car on the tracks with the baby powder. Like we did all of that. So I was really into it. I liked getting scared nowadays. I'm like, I don't I like the jump scares kind of, but yeah, that that's a little too traumatizing for me to re-relive.
SPEAKER_00:Listeners, one day I was being driven home from play practice, and we get a phone call from Priscilla. She had unplugged every television in her home and she was hiding in her closet because her parents and her sister weren't home. Could we come get her? And we did. We did. So but the ring is one of my favorites because it's it is so good and it does have such a lasting effect on you.
SPEAKER_01:You know, I wonder if we did watch it now, if I would be as scared, but I just I don't want to try it. But I do wonder I think we would so it was the hair over the face and the the idea of something coming out of your TV. Like, come on.
SPEAKER_00:I know it's it was genius. It was genius. Of course, it was originally a Korean film, so you know, they do it, they do it real good over there.
SPEAKER_01:I was gonna say, did you ever watch the original? Is it Ringu?
SPEAKER_00:Ringoo. I wanna say I did because I was such a fan of the ring, but I don't really remember it. And I don't know if it was because they're very similar. You know how sometimes when an Americanized version of a horror movie or any movie comes out and it's kind of basically just the same thing, but with not even American actors because Naomi Watts is Australian, but you know, just with different actors. I did remember watching the original The Grudge, though, and that was really good. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, that was really good.
SPEAKER_00:They just do like demon scary girls real well.
SPEAKER_01:I think that they don't have the same censorship as we do. So it gets a little um, a little, it's like it's usually a little scarier when you watch their version. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:All right. I also love what lies beneath, and it holds a very special place in my heart. I grew up watching this movie with my mom. I'm a huge Michelle Pfeiffer fan, Anne Harrison Ford fan. And it's just a good old-fashioned Hitchcockan ghost story. So we talked about believing in ghosts during our Crazy Brave episode. Do you have a good ghost story, P?
SPEAKER_01:I have many good ghost stories, actually. I'm gonna pick the short one. Well, so I was had to, I was six years old when my sister, my mom, and I went to Vietnam with my cousins and you know, my mom's sister. My mom would always tell us, like, Vietnam has a lot of spirits and ghosts, you just have to be very careful, et cetera, et cetera. Like it was a normal thing to her. It wasn't like, oh, um, are they real? Are they not? It was very much like this is just what it is. How are you to be careful though? What does that mean? I think it's like if you hear something, don't go after it. Okay, okay, don't go like the stairs. And you just let it be, let it do it. You don't know if it's a happy spirit or a bad spirit. You just let it do its thing, like, you know, to each its own kind of thing. So um, we stayed at my uncle's place, who lived in like a multi-story building, and all the kids were in a room. And to this day, I cannot tell if it happened in real life or if it was a dream. Like, that's how real and present it was. We were all laying there, and I just remember waking up in the middle of the night and seeing this woman in a red dress in this like armoire with the mirror in it, and it was fucking terrifying. Like, I remember being so terrified, and I was just frozen, like slightly trying to tap someone to wake up, saw the ghost, and it just like moved, but also went away. And I could not sleep for the rest of the night because I was freaking out. Obviously, the morning came and I was still awake, and I just was like, was I sleeping? Or that had to have happened because I never went back to sleep. Um, but I had asked my cousin, my sister, if they had seen something. They didn't see the woman in the red dress, but they had all heard and seen something at their own time and whatnot. So I to this day still feel like that was my very first experience with um with a ghost.
SPEAKER_00:And you were so young you didn't think to ask anyone, was there a woman in a red dress who like died here? Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Because my mom could had already kind of set it up that like ghosts are real here. I think that I didn't even want to like know. We just like, okay, I'm scared of that rune. Let's stay away, or does it just float everywhere? Like, I don't fucking know. I'm never gonna be alone in this house, though.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Did I tell you that I think our current house is haunted? Oh, what? Yes, we have wooden floors and they're creaky. Every night past like eight o'clock, it sounds like someone is walking on the floors to the point where like my husband and I have gotten up before. We thought it was one of the kids. The kids are passed out asleep in their beds. So now when it starts happening, and it'll happen when my husband's out of town, and I just say, like, not tonight, ghost. I really do. I'm like, uh don't do this to me. And we have a tonal in our room, and tonal is supposed to turn on only if there's like motion activated. Oh no. And it has turned on in the middle of the night. So now we completely shut it off, which you're not really like we flip it off when we're done with the workouts. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:So come stay with me soon. Bitch, you have not told me that. And otherwise, I would not be staying with you. Oh my gosh.
SPEAKER_00:Do you do you guys get scared or are you used to it now? I definitely feel anxious, but it's never escalated from something other than you know, creaky footsteps and the tonal turning on. And whenever I'm just like, please, not tonight, it kind of stops. So I don't know.
SPEAKER_01:Have you ever thought to put like something down to see if you know? What if it's just we're not Ouija?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, it's not a say crit what critters? I have one dog and I know where she like it's not her.
SPEAKER_01:No, I was saying, like, what if they're like rodents or just in the wall creaking?
SPEAKER_00:It's not a wall, it's not a wall situation. It is the floor, it's creaking like somebody is stepping.
SPEAKER_01:See, I couldn't do that. I could not know.
SPEAKER_00:But there are good ghosts, there are helpful ghosts. So, so yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Well, you should not have told me that because I will not be staying the night at your place. You'll be fine. You'll be fine.
SPEAKER_00:So, before we get further into the episode, I do want to just tell anyone, if they haven't seen the movie, stop here. Do yourself a favor, watch this movie. We're gonna spoil the shit out of it because that's what we do on these deep dives. But really, if you can experience this movie without knowing what it really is all about, come back and listen after you've watched it. That's all I'm gonna say. Go into it blind, don't read anything, don't watch anything, just go rent it. It's on Amazon right now for$3.79. It's the strangest amount of money. But okay, so we're gonna get into it. I got a lot of my info today from IMDB, Wikipedia, and cinema.com. What lies beneath was released July 21st, 2000. The budget was$100 million and the box office was$291.4 million. Turned a nice profit. I mean, Harrison Ford and Michelle Pfeiffer, huge stars at the time, big box office draw. The screenplay is by Clark Gregg, whom you might know better as Agent Phil in The Avengers World. What? Google Clark Gregg right now, two G's, and you'll be like, This guy wrote this movie? Yes, that guy wrote this movie.
SPEAKER_01:Oh, okay, so random.
SPEAKER_00:Isn't that so crazy? He hasn't really written much more, but he wrote this, and I couldn't really find there's not a lot of behind-the-scenes trivia with this, how this movie got made, which is really disappointing. And I welcome, I welcome that information. How did Clark Gregg get this story? The story actually, we'll get into where the idea of this story came from in a second. It's directed by Robert Semecas, and it stars Harrison Ford and the Michelle Pfeiffer, among many other amazing performances. P, can we talk about Michelle Pfeiffer in this movie? Is that woman the most perfect looking woman that has ever existed in the entire world? Especially the scene where she is possessed. She is so sexy in that scene when she's Madison.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, she's, I mean, I feel like this was, I don't know what she looks like now, but this was her prime. Like when I think Michelle Pfeiffer, this is who I visualized.
SPEAKER_00:She's 42 when she filmed this movie. 42, wow. So I loved her in the movie One Fine Day with George Clooney, up close and personal. She's great in the Witches of Eastwick. I mean, she's she's just great. Like she's just fantastic. And I'm a huge Michelle Pfeiffer fan. Harrison Ford, it was such a genius move casting him because up until this point, he had only played good guys. He'd only played heroes. That was a huge twist. And that really shows you just how crucial casting can be. If they had cast a guy who, in anything else, had sort of played a baddie before, I think the audience would have been expecting something. They there's no way that, well, I'd say there is no way they were expecting this, but put a pin in that, because we're gonna get back to that in a second. Although I do think it is fun to watch it after you've watched it once and you know that he's the baddie, to watch it again and like clock his performance to be like, is that a is that a tip? Like, is he kind of letting the audience know? But if you watch it the first time, like there's I'm sorry, there's no way that you suspect that man. Like, there's just no way.
SPEAKER_01:It's kind of like any twist, like like six sense kind of things. Like, did we notice he was a ghost the entire time? Like, what are all the clues that we should have picked up on that we didn't?
SPEAKER_00:Yes. So let's get to why I think that the movie didn't do as well critically as I feel it should have, because it's amazing.
SPEAKER_01:Wait, what did it get rated?
SPEAKER_00:It is 49% tomato meter, so that's the critics, and it's only 58% popcorn meter. That's that's us. That's the the regular people. So in the chat, I just sent you a link. It's the 30-second version of the ad that ran in 2000. Watch it real fast. Let me know your reaction. And I know you, you hate to watch trailers. You think trailers give too much away, just wait until you watch this one.
SPEAKER_01:Oh my gosh, the the trailer man's voice. I feel like, okay, here's the thing. I feel like we might be biased in loving this movie so much because I grew up, my parents are huge Harrison Ford fans and Michelle Pfeiffer fans. So this was just something younger that I could watch with my parents, number one. Number two, yes, it is great, but I mean, watching that trailer, it's so dated. So if any of those reviews come like later on, like the years later, I can see people not being super into it.
SPEAKER_00:Okay, but the trailer gives away Norman is not a good person. I didn't see that. At the very end, it's Michelle Pfeiffer saying, I think she's starting to suspect something, your wife. So it's giving away that there's something more sinister to Norman, and it's kind of giving away who Michelle Pfeiffer's character is possessed by. I didn't know. Which the entire first half of the movie is that you think it's something completely different. And that's kind of the midway point, is when you realize that, oh my gosh, you know, the wife of the neighbor is not dead.
SPEAKER_01:Okay, so I took that as she's possessed, and so this possession is not her wife.
SPEAKER_00:When you watch the movie for the entire first half of the movie, you think that we're watching a movie where the neighbor has murdered his wife, and that ghost is what's haunting Michelle Pfeiffer. I think you might know too much now because it's hard to go into it blind, but this was a huge critical response at the time that the trailer was released. So many people felt like they went into the movie knowing what was going to happen. And that took away a huge element of suspense, which is what Hitchcock was known for his twists and his tricks. You thought you were seeing one thing, you ended up seeing another. The technology is dated, but I think that the story is honestly still really strong and kind of timeless.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah. It's simple. It's simple, it's straightforward. Even all the little things, like I mean, it's so funny because when you rewatch it and the little computer comes up and the technique sounds like, oh my. I was like, this is ridiculous.
SPEAKER_00:But yeah, it's great. So I think budgets are really fascinating, especially today when they've grown increasingly smaller and smaller because of streaming and just there's not the additional revenue that we used to be able to collect with DVD sales and you know video rentals. I wanted to compare the budget really fast. So, like I said, it was 100 million. Hereditary, which was a popular and critically acclaimed horror movie, its budget was what can you get? What do you guess?
SPEAKER_01:Hereditary. I never watched Hereditary.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, oh, you'd really like it, I think.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, my sister keeps telling me to watch it, but I'm a little nervous too.
SPEAKER_00:Well, it was 10 million and its box office was 82.8 million. Sinners, a recent phenom you and I both loved. What do you think that its budget was?
SPEAKER_01:I would say that one's like a 200 mil plus movie.
SPEAKER_00:90 million dollars.
SPEAKER_01:Wow, good for them. Mm-hmm.
SPEAKER_00:Mm-hmm.
SPEAKER_01:Good for them.
SPEAKER_00:I know. I think it's just really fascinating. And Sinners went on to make$366.7 million.
SPEAKER_01:We just watched that yesterday, actually.
SPEAKER_00:Again. Again? I watched it last week. So good. Where the hell did this budget go? I found something online that said that Zemeckis, Pfeiffer, and Harrison Ford were all paid$25 million for their individual roles. That leaves us with$25 million to make this movie. And it seems simple, right? You just said it's a very simple movie. We know that there's the huge water scene at the end, right? And there's definitely some green screen happening. There's some CGI happening. A portion of the budget, I think, went to constructing this entire house from scratch on a lake in Vermont. Oh, really? They built that house and they built the neighbor's house for the movie. Well and then they demolished it.
SPEAKER_01:You know, surprisingly, a lot of times when they do that, it's it's because it's cheaper than pooling permits and renting and all that. Isn't that crazy to think? Who knows if it actually is, but a lot of times people build sets because it is just that much cheaper to do so.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, that is really interesting. I know that it wasn't like necessarily up to code, and obviously they have to build things certain ways to make it easier to film scenes, especially when you watch the movie. There are so many shots that feel like oneers, honestly, where you're just like following Michelle Pfeiffer like through the house, and you're you know that walls must be being removed and put it put it back. And so it's really interesting. We'll get into a little bit more of that soon. But CGI also took up a huge part of the budget. So Mecca said that he wanted what lies beneath to be an ode to Hitchcock if he had access to the digital tools available in you know 1999 when they filmed it. And the CGI is expensive, we know that. I think it holds up really well.
SPEAKER_01:What is CGI there?
SPEAKER_00:I can't really think of what they you know, when Madison at the end, right? When she floats up and she gets Harrison Ford and then she turns back into like she bec she looks like a a live woman and then she turns back into the ghost corpse. Yeah, the ghosts in the bathtub, the steam, when the steam goes down the mirror and it shows her the messages, like all that's CGI. A lot of the stuff in the water. There's the famous shot, too, where it it looks like the camera is literally underneath the floor. Michelle Pfeiffer, after she's been drugged, and it's underneath and her face is all squished up. And this was achieved by using plexiglass. And according to MI16 Evil on Reddit, who claimed that the film's visual effects guy, Robert Legato, came to their school and discussed this shot. They write Michelle Pfeiffer had her face on the plexiglass and they had to frame by frame mat her face and the floor on top of any flexiglass. Like literally, it was hand-animated hundreds of frames. So stuff like that takes a lot of time and a lot of money.
SPEAKER_01:Interesting.
SPEAKER_00:Did you feel like the CGI held up?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, because it wasn't anything like crazy you see later where it's like a monster or anything like that. I feel like it all held up pretty well. They're pretty simple things, which is nice to hear him say, you know, if Hitchcock had it, because I don't think that it's overdone by any means.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, it's used as a tool to create even more suspense and tension. The scene where she's driving at the end over the bridge and it's storming and, you know, or I guess it's not even it's not raining, but where she's driving over the bridge, that was green screen as well. Though they did shut down the bridge a couple days to film parts of either that scene or another scene where they're driving across the bridge, and apparently that made a lot of the locals angry. So speaking of Hitchcock, can you pinpoint some Hitchcock references? I know how many, how much Hitchcock have you seen?
SPEAKER_01:Not a lot, and honestly, it's been a while since I've seen it too. So unless I'm watching it for the purpose of doing that, I wouldn't even know where to start.
SPEAKER_00:Okay, well, Hitchcock was famous for his blonde leads. So Michelle Pfeiffer being blonde, that was huge number one. Claire being obsessed with her neighbors, viewing them through her window, thinking that the husband killed the wife. This is a nod to rear window. Norman's name being Norman. What movie is that from? Is that Psycho? That's Psycho, yes. And then the white bathroom is also a nod to Psycho. Claire being haunted by the ghost of her husband's ex-lover is a nod to Rebecca. And the fact that Madison looks a lot like Claire is a nod to Vertigo. Also in Vertigo, the main character is being gaslit by a man into thinking she's losing her sanity. A la Claire Spencer. A lot of the long, seemingly impossible shots through the floor is also a nod to Hitchcock's rope, which I feel is a very underrated and not as well-known Hitchcock movie. And if you like a good psychological thriller, you have got to watch that one. It's amazing. It like all takes place in one room. It's so good. It's called Rope. So, some more fun or not so fun stuff if you're Michelle Pfeiffer. She had a huge fear of water, apparently. Oh my gosh. So obviously, there was a lot of water happening in this film. And she had to lay in, you know, a fairly full bathtub. Yeah. Multiple times. I mean, taking the bath and then also the climactic scene. Right.
SPEAKER_01:She had to act like she was paralyzed. Wait, what did they say why she has a fear of water? That's an interesting fear.
SPEAKER_00:She just kind of has a fear of water. I mean, I have a fear of dark water. I hate dark water.
SPEAKER_01:Is it, but is it a fear of dark water or is it a fear of like the critters that are underneath that you can't see?
SPEAKER_00:Both. Because of the critters underneath that I can't see, I have a fear of dark water.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, because I wonder if hers is like actual fear of drowning or yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Maybe she had like a near-drowning experience growing up. And she doesn't go into it, but I just read that she had a fear of either through like going through it, she is fine now, or her fear has been amplified and she only takes showers the rest of her life. Wait, did she comment on what it was like then to film this? No, and I wish like I don't know why these things don't exist. I know that press kits happened, and even the like DVD commentary apparently is not very good. And it's just like Robert Zemeckis commenting how beautiful Michelle Pfeiffer looks the entire time, which like I get, but also you gotta give us more, you know. I I don't know. I wish that some of these older movies, these iconic movies, you know, people would go back and have these like retrospectives of their career a little bit more, you know?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Okay, so but you're fine with water. You're cool. Just drop you off in the middle of a lake and there's no Yeah, I don't think that I would.
SPEAKER_01:I might have a fear of like some critters, but it wouldn't it's only if I feel something then I will panic. But no, I don't think I'm necessarily scared.
SPEAKER_00:I blame Jaws. I blame Jaws in all of the movies where there's creepy, large, larger than should exist things in lakes and rivers and stuff. Okay, so here's another fun thing. Robert Sumekis shot this movie in between filming Castaway. They took a year hiatus so that Tom Hanks could lose weight and grow hair, and they decided to film this movie.
SPEAKER_01:This movie seems like it was well before Castaway in my mind for some reason. That is wild.
SPEAKER_00:I know, I guess it came out. Yeah, Google When Castaway came out 2000.
SPEAKER_01:What? Released Wait, when? December 7th, 2000.
SPEAKER_00:Wow. So they held on to this, this in post for a while then, which makes sense because it did have some of the CGI stuff. We have to remember, this is 25 years ago. Like CGI technology is not the same. So, like I said, the screenplay is written by Clark Gregg, but the story was inspired by writer Sarah Kernikan's or Kernichin's own experience with the personal haunting. All right, so filming on What Lies Beneath extended from late summer into the autumn months in New England. The change of seasons worked perfectly for the style of the film as the bright days of summer gave way to the deepening shadows and darker colors of fall. Like I mentioned, the house was built for the movie. It was built in Vermont on the banks of Lake Champlain and was 3,500 square feet.
SPEAKER_02:Wow.
SPEAKER_00:Nantucket style shingled house. Semeca says that the house had to work on two levels. It had to look like a kind of dream home in the sunlight, but when the shadows or the light hit it a certain way, it would turn ominous. They also designed and built the Fear's house next door, the neighbors, like I said, and they duplicated both the exterior and the interior on sound stages in LA. Another fun thing, there were multiple bathroom sets for the film. Can you guess how many?
SPEAKER_01:I'm gonna say one, two, three, five times.
SPEAKER_00:Yes, five times. Really good job. Yeah, it was basically to get the different camera angles, especially when Claire starts being submerged in the water. Another key design element established was the use of mirrors. So next time you go back and watch it, because I read this before I watched it, there are a lot of mirrors in the house. Obviously, there's the mirror in the bathroom, which shows her the note. There's the mirror at the end that shatters, and she uses the shard to kind of protect herself if Norman comes after her again. Zemeckis utilizes shooting through mirrors to kind of show you something, but not the whole picture often. So that's a really cool thing to take note of next time you do a rewatch. One of the production designers said, We used mirrors as a kind of gateway to the truth. So there are a lot of mirrors throughout the house, but the only time you should really be aware of them is when they're reflecting something wrong.
SPEAKER_01:Oh, cool. Oh my gosh, it's always so scary though, whenever it's the um like after the shower medicine cabinet thing where it's like, what are you gonna see when they close that damn mirror?
SPEAKER_00:Totally. Zemeckis and his DP Don Burgess also applied camera angles, which began at eye level and then progressively grow, progressively move lower. You froze. Can you hear me? Okay, guys, we had just we literally just got kicked off. This is take two of our Zoom. It might have been a ghost. It's never happened to me before. Zoom just literally kicked us off. That was crazy. Brought my ghost friend out. Do you see this little ghost friend? Did you hear me say that Zemechis, they also had camera angles which began at eye level and progressively moved lower and lower?
SPEAKER_01:No.
SPEAKER_00:Zemeckis and his DP Don Burgess also used camera angles which would begin at eye level and progressively move lower and lower as the fear intensified. I just, I do love learning how intentional everything is. I mean, Zemeckis really wanted to pay homage to Hitchcock with this film. And I think he did. It it does build with attention and suspense really, really well, especially starting from the moment Claire is put into that bathtub and the water starts filling up.
SPEAKER_01:That's the scariest part for sure.
SPEAKER_00:You're on the edge of your seat. You're like, is this woman about to die? And then another intentional progression is Claire's wardrobe palette. She starts off wearing lighter colors, whites, moves into grays, and eventually ends in black when she's playing the cello. And then, of course, she's in the white nightgown during the entire third act.
SPEAKER_01:I definitely feel like I gotta rewatch it with these like notes in mind. I would have never noticed that. Right? I know. It's really fun.
SPEAKER_00:Okay, so let's get to the story. We open on a body of water. Dun dun dun. What's that about? We're not really sure. Then we see this absolutely gorgeous, gorgeous home and this absolutely gorgeous woman. I thought that the house's decor and style really held up. It's just that classic Nantucket Cape Cod style. I would live in that house.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, it definitely felt just like a lake house. Very, very nice money. They got they got some money there.
SPEAKER_00:They're rich. That house is huge. Yeah. But this is a really tough day for our girl Claire because today she has to bring her daughter Caitlin to college. We learn right away that Norman, Claire's husband and scientist, is not Caitlin's father because she calls him Norman. Claire keeps it together until she's walking out of the door. And I'm not gonna lie, I had a moment where the last time I watched this movie, I was definitely closer to Caitlin. And like this time, not like close to Claire at any, you know, when it comes to driving my kids off to college, but I was like, oh, I understand her in this scene a lot more than I did.
SPEAKER_01:The mother having to say goodbye.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, that's really hard. Back at the house later that night, Claire and Norman are about to get it on when they overhear their new neighbors having very loud sex. Has this ever happened to you?
SPEAKER_01:No, never. And I've I've lived in LA. I don't know. No, you live in LA. Yeah. I know it's like it looks crazy because you see this in movies all the time. It's like, I've lived in LA, I've lived in hotel rooms for for long stretches of time. Like, I've never heard that.
SPEAKER_00:I mean, I guess it would take somebody being very loud intentionally and all the windows being open. It was it was interesting, but you know, setting the stage, setting the stage. Fun trivia. When Claire is going through the clothes the next day in Caitlin's dresser, she she's like folding things, putting things away, and she takes out this Juilliard tank top and she smells it. There is an E.T. figurine on top of the dresser. Harrison Ford's wife, Melissa Matheson, wrote and produced E.T., The Extraterrestrial. And Harrison Ford actually played a school principal in a deleted scene.
SPEAKER_01:Wait, his wife wrote E.T.
SPEAKER_00:She wrote and produced.
SPEAKER_01:Oh, that is so cool. Wait, are they still married?
SPEAKER_00:No, he's been with Callista Flockhart for like years, right?
SPEAKER_01:I thought that he only had one, like I only knew of one wife, to be honest.
SPEAKER_00:I think he's been with Callista Flockhart for decades at this point. Yeah. Like I said, the tank top says Juilliard on it, and we cut to Claire going through old photos. One of Caitlin wearing the Juilliard tank top. And we're like, hmm, could this be Claire's? Because clearly Caitlin does not go to Juilliard. She just started college. And it wasn't Juilliard. A few more things are in this photo album: an obituary for Norman's father, a picture of Claire with another man, and a picture of a very, very wrecked car. And this really upsets Claire. Okay, and listen, I I really do love this movie, but this was one of those things where I was like, why are all of these in the same photo album? Like what?
SPEAKER_01:Seriously. Seriously. This is like jumping ahead. But also when it was like the photo in the newspaper and it was folded, and then you unfold, it's like, come on, guys, come on.
SPEAKER_00:Just happenstance. You know, sometimes in movies you just need things to work out the way you need them to work out. Okay, people, we can't overthink these things. Okay, so then Claire goes outside, and I loved this scene. She overhears her neighbor crying and she kind of like peeks over the fence and she's like, Are you okay? And we only see shots of the neighbor through the hole in the fence and the slit of the fence. And I thought that was just genius. We are with Claire trying to like see what this woman looks like, see if she's okay, because you can't tell if she's crying because she's upset or because she's it's just a it's a very weird scene. And then she like runs away from Claire and we only see the back of her. And then Claire later sees her new neighbors, Mary and Warren Fear, fighting outside of their house. She's watching them through her own window. Later, she tries to go meet the wife, check in on her, and she finds a woman's shoe on the porch railing with what appears to be a drop of blood. Claire's like, uh oh. Later, she sees the husband put what appears to be a large body bag in the trunk of his car during a rainstorm. Claire starts experiencing unsettling things. She's playing fetch with her dog Cooper and she throws the ball into the lake, something they've done many times, but this time he refuses to jump in. She goes to retrieve it with this long rake thing, and she sees what she believes is a woman's body in the lake. Her front door starts opening on its own. The radio turns on and off. She freaks out, understandably. I mean, I girl, if my front door popped open, are you going in the house?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, you say that shit, but you're talking about hearing footsteps in your house and you aren't even scared. I would be freaking out.
SPEAKER_00:I was freaked out the first few times, but then it's kind of like, what am I? I'm not gonna go get a hotel room because I hear creaky footsteps in the house.
SPEAKER_01:You're not gonna ask the owner, like is Is there a history here? What's going on?
SPEAKER_00:We know our landlords. They're like relatively new owners. So I don't know if they would know the history.
SPEAKER_01:Mm-mm. See? Well, it's funny because we always do that. We'll watch movies and be like, they're such an idiot. They open the door, they go outside. But you know, we're not when we're home and something like that happens, we don't have that background horror music playing and like it's all tense and shit. It's true. Granted, I think that I've been raised to the point where like I'm not answering the door, period, if I don't know someone's coming. Yeah. But there are definitely times where it's like, what is that? And I'll go look in the backyard and I'm like, is that a raccoon? In hindsight, I'm like, I could have just been murdered. That was like a horror movie moment right there.
SPEAKER_00:Our first instinct is to always logicalize it. She go goes up to her door and it pops open. Oh, there must be something wrong with the spring or the doorknob or something, you know? But then when it happens again and again, and I don't know, a radio turning on and off, like I immediately go ghost. I'm like, there's a spirit here for sure.
SPEAKER_01:That was scary. Well, the thing is the dogs. Like if a dog is barking or acting weird, I would 100% read into it.
SPEAKER_00:I told you, and I think our episode of Pets in the City when Dutch, my dog would just bark into the darkness in the middle of the night.
SPEAKER_01:I feel like get it together, Dutch.
SPEAKER_00:See, here's the thing though about the LA area. When you find good rent and good square footage, you can't question if it's been haunted. You just have to stay. There's a whole like sitcom about that right now, isn't there? There's like a sitcom about a young couple that moves into a haunted house and they're like, but the rent was cheap.
SPEAKER_01:Is there really? I want to watch yet.
SPEAKER_00:I think it was based on a popular British show, too. Okay, so Claire freaks out, understandably. And she goes to the lab where Norman is working. And we overhear these students or fellow scientists talking about this new substance that they've created that can paralyze a mouse, maybe even large mammals, for three to five minutes. Interesting. So Claire meets the husband, the neighbor husband, and she's like, Where is your wife? And he's like, She's gone. You know, he's like so creepy. He's like twiddling the mustache a little bit. And then it seems like he's he catches Claire spying on him. And all of a sudden, you know, you see his front door kind of swing open, swing shut, but you don't see him. And then you see these water footprints on the ground. And then Cooper starts barking, and you're just like, oh my god, he's coming to get Claire. And it just turns out to be Norman. And you're like, phew, not the bad guy, but maybe.
SPEAKER_01:That reminds me of the scene where him and his wife, you can it's gonna be later, but she's he's like pretending to choke her. Oh, it's so funny.
SPEAKER_00:So good. Yeah, at the dinner party. Yeah. Or like the dinner. Yeah. They're they're kind of actually like on their way to that to that dinner, and they go across the bridge and they're like, oh, here's the moment that you get cell service. So it's like fun. It is fun to watch it back when you're like, oh, there's that little hint that that you know, the screenwriter Zemeckis is dropping for us. Pay attention to this. Back at the house, a framed newspaper clipping of Norman and Claire at a party falls. We talked about this a little bit. The caption of the newspaper photo clipping says, Photo by Andrew Lehman. And Andrew Lehman was an uncredited graphic designer who worked on props in the movie.
SPEAKER_01:Oh, why was he unaccredited?
SPEAKER_00:I don't know if they always, depending on how far down the line you go, but I love that he put his name in this movie somehow.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, good for him.
SPEAKER_00:Claire also finds a weird key in the little floor vent, and she's like, hmm, what is this key to? Soon after, she finds the bathtub mysteriously filled with water. And when she leans over to unplug the chain to drain it, there's a woman's reflection in it. Freaks her out. So there's a lot of these bathroom scenes. You know, she takes a bath a lot. There's scenes where like she'll get out of the bath and then she'll kind of walk around, and then she goes back into the bathroom, and all of a sudden it's full of water and full of steam again. And Michelle Pfeiffer says that it was kind of hard to not laugh when she would be filming this because it would be a one-ar. Like, you'd follow Michelle Pfeiffer out of the bathroom, through the bedroom, into the hallway, and then she'd stop and she'd see steam coming out of the bathroom. And she was like, you could hear everybody in there, like as soon as she left the bathroom running in to be like, like fill it up with steam, fill up with, you know, like she could just hear the little the mice at work. And I think that's cute because they're there definitely are the things that you don't know are going on inches off screen is hilarious sometimes. And that is one thing that I will go back to. If I'm watching a really scary movie, I will break that fourth wall and I'll be like, okay, the DP is right there, or like there's a set piece. You know what I'm saying? Like I do that for myself.
SPEAKER_01:There's there's three tactics when I get really scared. I cover my ears because I feel like nine times out of ten, it's the music that's scaring you, not the visuals. So you can still watch it, just don't listen.
SPEAKER_00:Genius.
SPEAKER_01:And then rarely I'll cover my eyes. I usually cover my eyes when it's gore. And then the last one is the same, where I just like, okay, I see the lighting, it's all fake. Just remember it's a set, it's all fake. And it gets you through it.
SPEAKER_00:Yes. Back to the movie, Norman is very dismissive of Claire's fear that their house is haunted and suggests that she sees a therapist to deal with her mounting anxiety. There's been these like weird hints of Claire potentially having been involved. Like something else has been going on. When you IMDB the movie, it's like a year after a car accident, Claire Spencer. But if you watch the movie, you don't really put that together that Claire has been in an automobile accident. It really is just pieces of a puzzle that hasn't been put together for you yet. But there's something like you can tell people are a little careful with Claire, including her friend Jody, right? And they're all a little worried because Claire is saying goodbye to her daughter Caitlin, who she's really close with. It's a tricky time in Claire's life.
SPEAKER_01:I will say that was probably like my biggest critique of the movie. And maybe it's because they didn't establish the car accident well. Like they obviously had the news clipping when she found it in the box, and you kind of think that she's been through something. But her daughter leaving, I don't know. I I didn't really like how she was such a fragile character. It didn't make sense to me unless I had known, you know, she got in a car accident and lost her memory. But obviously, it sounds like they kind of figured in post that it was better left, like not kept a secret until a little later.
SPEAKER_00:It had been a minute since I'd seen the movie. So I honestly forgot about Claire's car accident. And I thought that the car was how her first I literally in my notes, I'm like, this picture of this man, was this her first husband? Caitlin called him Norman. Wait, what is happening? Like, did he die in a car accident? I just didn't remember that part. But I agree with you. I think it would have actually helped us understand her state of mind a little bit more. Although it is also interesting because we are witnessing her being haunted. Yeah. Everybody else thinks she's crazy, but we're seeing the radio turn on and off. We're seeing the door open.
SPEAKER_01:But that's what I'm saying. That part felt obviously minus the technology and the computer, but that part part felt a little dated where nowadays we give women a little more credit where I just feel like everyone was so dismissive of her and um just treated her like she was crazy, or just that she had issues and just she's fragile. And I don't know. I just felt like maybe women are still treated that way, but I felt like I was about to say, I might disagree with that statement.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:I don't know. It felt like in the movie, it's like, really? Are we really that? That felt a little like anti-feminist in a sense, watching that happen.
SPEAKER_00:I think, especially if it is an homage to Hitchcock films, that element is a very important element of the film. And I do think that that's why they do show us Claire actually being haunted, so that we, the audience, are on her side and we see how dismissive everyone is being. I will say the only like the big female character in the film, Jody, isn't really dismissive. She brings her the Ouija board, she hands her the book about the occult. She's like, hey, you're you're talking with a ghost. Let's figure out who this ghost is. It's really Norman who's being so dismissive, and we all know we all come to understand why. Speaking to all that, I thought that it was really fascinating that the therapist encourages her to kind of go down this ghost rabbit hole. And he encourages her to try to connect with the ghost. Then we get to this seance and Ouija board scene. Okay, so I was gonna ask you if you'd ever done a Ouija board, but you told me at the top that you did. Why? What was your experience? I that's been a place where I've drawn a line. Like I don't like that.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, we definitely did all the because we were kids and we didn't know anything of it. It was me, my sister. And it was sold as a game.
SPEAKER_00:You could just go to Walmart and get a Ouija board.
SPEAKER_01:We did that, um, and nothing happened. I mean, really, nothing, nothing of substance. It was almost like a prank, and it felt more like kids trying to be like to prove you're not a wuss. Like we did the Candyman four times in the mirror. Bloody Mary. We did Bloody Mary, we did light as a feather, stiff as a board, try to do like we did all of that stuff. None of it played out at all. I did do, I think we talked about this actually in um another one of your podcasts. I did do the Ouija board more recently in like 2018. Remember when I worked on that Mama Medium show? That's kind of a long story though, but yeah, I did it then, which I at that point I usually do draw the line, but she was very convincing, and so I did it. And that one I had a crazy experience.
SPEAKER_00:Yes, you share your experience in our Crazy Brave episode, but your story is only available in the extended version. Okay, so Claire and Jody do the Ouija board and things get real creepy real fast. But Jody pieces out, which is this shit just bails. Like she's like, you're fine. It's fine. Claire goes back inside the house and again finds the bathtub filled with water. Okay, so this was interesting because I double checked the plot points on Wikipedia. And Wikipedia says that a message reading your next briefly, followed by you know, appears in the foggy bathroom mirror. But I don't remember ever reading your next.
SPEAKER_02:I don't.
SPEAKER_00:I wish I would have thought to go back, but that's gonna be fun to see if next time does it say you're next very quickly before melting more into you know, because that is chilling.
SPEAKER_01:I remember it saying you know, because it was always a play on her memory.
SPEAKER_00:Right.
SPEAKER_01:I don't know.
SPEAKER_00:The repressed memory that she that we we uncover later. She runs down the steps and she turns the corner and the computer is saying M E F M E F M E F. And she mistakes it for her neighbor, Mary Fure. She confronts Warren, the husband, at this event, and she's just starts yelling at him and she's so impassioned. And then Mary comes out of the bathroom and is like, No, hi, I'm here. And you're just like, da-da-da. It cuts straight to Claire back at the therapist's office, which is actually really such a funny little moment. And like I said, we we know that this is not all in her head. So we're just like, wait, what? Who is haunting her then? At a party, a friend reminds Claire of an argument that she had had with Norman exactly a year earlier and asks if she's okay. And Claire's like, hmm, she's like starting to turn the wheels a little bit. When she returns home, the newspaper picture falls again. This time she unfolds it and she sees a story on the back about a miss missing woman named Madison Elizabeth Frank, who bears a striking resemblance to Michelle Pfeiffer. Now, in an interview, Amber, who is cast as Madison, says that it wasn't intentional for Madison to look like Claire and that it was kind of one of those happy accidents. But I don't know, like that heightens the story a lot. Oh, yeah. So good happy accident, I guess. I also thought it was really funny that they included her middle name. Do they often do that in like missing persons?
SPEAKER_01:I don't know if they I would say often, but I think it was a way to kind of be like, there's no mistaking this as a common first-last name. This is like straight up. That's true. Okay. Madison Frank is pretty identifying name here, first middle last.
SPEAKER_00:I buy that because I thought it was, you know, later when she goes to Google like the name of missing people, and Madison's is the only one that includes her middle name. Yeah. So it's like Emmy Frank. Hello, here you go. I thought that Norman played it's so cool when he first sees the photo of Madison. He's like, hmm, I don't. But then he very quickly tells Claire to stop. Stop what she's doing. This is crazy. Stop. And you're like, mm-hmm. I'm sure you want her to stop. She's digging.
SPEAKER_01:Was that your first? That was the first inkling that it was like something ain't right. Harrison Ford, like, because he got real angry.
SPEAKER_00:It's so hard for me to remember watching it without knowing Harrison Ford was the baddie, right? I was so young. I was probably preteens or teenager, that I don't know, because a part of me could justify a husband being like, you're going crazy. You went crazy a year ago and I almost lost you. You wrapped your car around a tree going 80 miles per hour. I could justify that response. But of course, we know he's the baddie. So yeah, that's where your mind goes. Okay, so Claire decides to visit Madison's mother and she secretly takes a lock of her hair. Oh, that was definitely fucking creepy. So creepy and so sad. Madison's mom, that was really sad. We also see photos of Madison wearing this really pretty necklace. Okay. Claire attempts to summon Madison's ghost. We see her check her reflection in the mirror, and her blue eyes turn green. She becomes possessed by Madison and she aggressively seduces Norman. This is where we get the famous, I think she's starting to suspect something. Who? Your wife scene. The procession ends just short of Claire Madison grabbing the letter opener and stabbing Norman. As he pushes her off, she drops the lock of hair and thus she returns to being Claire again. But all of this triggers a repressed memory. Norman had an affair with Madison, one of his students during a rough patch in their marriage. Claire had forgotten about it due to her car accident. Shaken, Claire leaves and spends the night at Jody's house. Jodie confesses that she once saw Norman arguing with a woman at a cafe in nearby town a year earlier. And she like apologizes to Claire for not telling her. Would you have told your bestie? Would you? Yes. You would have told me. Right? If you saw my husband in what seemed to be like a very intimate argument with another woman. Well, she she knew about it. And then Claire finds out about it the night of the party because Madison went to that party and told her. Right, but that's why she so she didn't know about it.
SPEAKER_01:Oh, I thought you mean like post amnesia. The friend doesn't tell her post-amnesia. Is that what you're talking about? Would you tell her?
SPEAKER_00:I don't think she told her pre-amnesia. I don't think she told her.
SPEAKER_01:No, so I think that she what I understood is that she found out when she found out. I didn't think that she like knew before. I think that she, whenever she got in the accident, I remember them saying, like, you were just so distraught, and your husband, Norman, was just a shell of a person, and he seemed genuinely really sorry and felt so bad. And we just wanted you to recover. So she didn't tell her, she didn't tell her after her amnesia.
SPEAKER_00:I don't think that she was anything about Oh, you're right. The scene took place, the scene that Jody witnessed took place after Claire's car accident.
SPEAKER_01:Right, right.
SPEAKER_00:Yes. Okay. So that was her way.
SPEAKER_01:So yeah, that's why I was like, that's a hard one. Cause as a friend, I feel like it really depends on the dynamic. It's like if you finally moved on, but she was fucked up. Like she was real fucked up after she found out, and everyone seemed somewhat kind of better. But I think if spooky things started happening and all this stuff started coming back up, I might hint for you to remember. But yeah, that's that's she didn't want to bring up, you know, a traumatizing event after she had forgotten about it.
SPEAKER_00:Right. I guess Jodi wasn't sure. Is did Claire forget, or is she just not wanting to talk about this anymore? Okay, okay. So Norman calls and leaves this message that we can all hear because it's one of those old school message machines. You can't use this anymore. Claire has to go back and she has to ask him. She has to know, did he kill Madison? Like she knows that they had the affair, but she needs the answer to that question because Madison's been missing for about a year. So in theory, the timeline was Madison showed up at this party, Claire got into the car accident. Jody saw Norman and Madison having this argument. And then Madison must have disappeared pretty quickly after that. If Jodie said she saw that about a year ago, all this happened within the last year. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. So Claire comes home and she finds Norman unconscious in the bathtub, an electric hairdryer dangling nearby. And luckily the fuse had popped, or else he would have been electrocuted, you know, all this stuff. This was a pretty good, I thought this was a pretty good red herring, honestly. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Little decoy.
SPEAKER_00:He assures Claire that it was just an accident, but he admits that Madison had confronted him when he ended their affair, but he insists that he did not kill her. He's so manipulative. And man, does he he plays that like groveling, please believe me husband so well? You believe him. Claire thinks that him almost dying and all of this is her fault because she invited Madison in during the seance, and she believes that Madison's ghost is trying to kill Norman. Norman discovers that Claire has this book about the occult that Jody gave her. And you really just think that he's this caring husband who thinks that his wife is losing it, losing it. The shot of him walking out after he's like tucked her in and he grabs the book, it's him leaving and then it pans down to her and her eyes are open. Oh, so good. She plays like creepy possessed eyes really well. And he's on the phone with who I believe is her therapist, and we see her walk behind him out the window. She's going down to the lake, and he runs after her and he's like, What are you doing? And she kind of dives in and she's supernaturally like a magnet pulled to this object that's at the bottom of the lake. When you watch her swim, she's not swimming, she's just like Superman flying through the water.
SPEAKER_01:She's like holding the hair too, right? Is it still the hair? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Norman dives in, grabs her before she can reach this object. It is this jewelry box matching the necklace that Madison wore in the photo. Norman pulls her out of the water and then they burn Madison's lock of hair because they're like, okay, she's still possessing you. And we think that that's it, except that it's not. There's a scene where Claire plays the cello and it's kind of like a like a wide, pretty wide shot. It's so beautiful. But she says that she feels that Madison is gone and maybe they can finally have peace and they reconcile. They're, they go out on their boat and and they seem to be doing better. And he suggests going away for the weekend, and she brings up the little town that Jody mentioned seeing Norman and Madison at. And he pretends to not know about the town. And she's like, okay, he's still lying. Like, there's still secrets. Like, why? She takes another bath. She just takes a lot of baths. And the key falls out of her robe again, the symbols. And she's like, okay, she wants to go visit this town. So she visits the town and she recognizes the same necklace and jewelry box in a shop window. And the shop is called the sleeping dog, which is a warning. You know, there's that phrase, let sleeping dogs lie. Oh no, nice. Yeah. It comes from an early 14th century proverb. I wanted to look it up, but it basically means avoid a potentially troublesome situation by just like walking away. Let sleeping dogs lie, right? Like, don't wake the beast. That night she decides to dive into the lake and go get this jewelry box. I'm so glad they don't show her. Like they just show her standing on the dock, and then the next scene is her having pulled it out of the water. And I'm just like, her diving in dark water. No, thank you. Also, I think they wanted to save the underwater shots for, you know, five minutes later. She opens the jewelry box and she finds Madison's necklace inside. She goes to call the police, but Norman stops her. And guess what? He has a news story. He claims that Madison killed herself, and in a panic, he pushed her and her car into the lake with her body inside. He agrees to call the police and kind of like fakes calling them, but then he attacks Claire. He paralyzes her with the substance we heard about earlier. And gosh, she plays the being paralyzed so well. I mean, you really believe it. It's so she's she's incredible. That's like unlocking a major nightmare. Being aware and feeling everything that's happening to you, but being unable to move any part of your body. No, thank you. That's where we get the amazing under-the-floor scene that I talked about at the top. Norman confesses everything because he has nothing to lose now, right? He thinks he's gonna kill Claire. He said that he murdered Madison when she threatened to expose their affair. He mocks Claire, saying that he initially assumed she made up a ghost story to subconsciously reveal the truth, but then he realized that she actually believed it. He places Claire in the bathtub and he fills it with water to stage her suicide. As he goes to remove Madison's necklace, Claire morphs into Madison. Norman freaks out, stumbles back, hits his head on like the toilet, so the porcelain, and he knocks himself out. He does rise again, as they always do with like the bloody hands, and he goes to like choke her, but then he loses consciousness again and he falls back down. The drugs are beginning to wear off, and Claire's able to like move her feet, and she struggles to unplug the bathtub and turn the water off. Like it's all very, very tense. It's all done so incredibly well. She does eventually escape drowning, but I wanted to say pee. So there's a scene, right, where it's like just her eyes are peeking out and they're like so bloodshot and open. Her nose is covered. I counted, I paused it. At an hour 48, 28-ish seconds. She gasps for air at an hour 50 minutes. She is basically underwater for a minute and a half, 90 seconds. She's had to hold her breath while also like trying to unplug the bathtub. I would have died. Like, I can't hold my breath for 90 seconds, can you?
SPEAKER_01:I mean, in a competition, probably not, but for your survival, I think you could- I would have passed out. I would have blacked out. 90 seconds is a very long time to hold your breath. I don't know. I think if your life depended on it, and 90 seconds isn't as long as you think it is. Is it?
SPEAKER_00:Okay, girl. You're trying to hold your breath for 90 seconds after this, and you let me know how it goes.
SPEAKER_01:I'm gonna try to do it because I feel like as a kid we did do that, and I feel like 60 seconds-ish was kind of like the longest, but we would also hold our breaths and do laps to see how far we could go. And like that's exerting a lot of energy, too.
SPEAKER_00:Okay, let's go. Let's go. Okay, ready? Set? Go. 40 seconds, I die. Oh my god. You're doing good. You're at a minute. Don't forget, you're trying to move your foot, you're unchaining a bathtub.
SPEAKER_01:Okay, that's it.
SPEAKER_00:Okay, you would have died as well.
unknown:You would have died as well.
SPEAKER_01:I feel like I couldn't have to.
SPEAKER_00:A minute, nine seconds.
SPEAKER_01:Good job. It's more of like exhaling at the proper times.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, it's hard. I know. It's hard. Okay. All right. So, anyways, Claire lives. Thank God, or else the movie would have ended so badly. We have the all these tense moments, right? Where she gets out of the tub, Norman's gone, she goes to answer the phone. It's busy. She's like, oh fuck, Norman has the fucking cordless phone.
SPEAKER_01:The cordless. I forgot what it was because we haven't used it in years.
SPEAKER_00:And she has she goes to reach for it. His fingers twitch. She freaks. She grabs the keys. She thinks they're her car keys. She's in her car. She sees Norman rise through the curtain and being backlit. And she's like, fuck, I need the other car. The truck that has the boat still attached. She gets in into the truck. She drives and she has her cell phone out. She's waiting for it to hit the bars. And it does. And she pulls the truck over and she sees Norman's bloody shirt hanging off the boat. She dials 911 and he attacks her from the back windshield. And she's gunning the car and she's screaming and she's like, 911, I'm on the bridge. I'm on the bridge. And he makes them crash into the water. She can't escape. He's stuck. His like jeans get stuck in the cr and you know the car collapses into itself a little bit. She's stuck because she can't open the door. She goes to crawl out past him and he won't let her leave. And they're kind of in this air bubble. But what had happened was when the truck went into the water, it dislodged a car with Madison's body at the bottom of the lake, just like Norman said it was. And Madison's corpse floats up through the window. And she floats up. And as Norman is drowning Claire, they're both under the water. He's taken her down with him. Instead of letting her live, the ghost of Madison grabs him, and Claire is free. And that that was all I thought that was well so well done.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, you get the redemption that you're waiting for.
SPEAKER_00:And Claire escapes, and Madison's corpse returns to its lifeless state, drifting into the depths as her necklace slips from Norman's hand. And then we cut through that winter. Claire visits a cemetery, very snowy. This was the only time the CGI didn't work for me because the snow is clearly fake in the wide shot. When it pulled in close, it was okay. She puts a red rose on Madison's grave. Okay, Pete. So before we wrap up the show, because I know you gotta go, a lot of people claim that you can see Madison's face in the snow just as the camera pans to the last shot. I just sent you the link of the last shot. Let me know if you see it.
SPEAKER_01:Now I'm gonna be looking for it. That's fine. Look for it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. An enjoyable ending for female viewers.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I guess it was a thing. Like most female, most females get whacked at the end. Did you see it? No.
SPEAKER_01:Am I supposed to see it while she's walking away?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. As the camera pans back, right before it fades to black, you're you should see two kind of shadowy eyes at the bottom.
SPEAKER_01:Oh, I guess I see eyes. Oh, okay. I can see it.
SPEAKER_00:Okay. There are you know stills online that really kind of like highlight it. But yeah, I think that it was intentional. I think that's gotta be just cool. That's pretty cool.
SPEAKER_01:Side note, every camera operator in DP makes fun of producers because they all are just like pan here, pan there, when there's like clear words for like different directions and whatnot. Oh, and like so tilt is up and down and pan is left and right, but like producers always just like pan down and it's whatever. Just it's it's a common mistake that we all do. But I think that that was actually on purpose. I don't see how it could not be.
SPEAKER_00:I agree, especially because it's CGI.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, that's I know it's a cool detail.
SPEAKER_00:You love a good movie where a woman helps out another woman's vengeance, you know? Like it's just good, and Claire gets saved because you know Norman was capable of this. So if he ever got tired of Claire, he had the right substance to make her go away. Before we wrap up the episode, I think we have to give major props to the composer of the film, Al Alan Silvestri. You talked about how music plays such a huge role in horror, and I agree with you. It's so eerie, it helps amplify everything else that's going on with the lighting and the shots. So, yay, Alan. And that is what lies beneath. A genius title on so many levels. Madison's Body and the Clues to Her Death and Norman's True Character Lie Beneath the Murky Waters, Claire's Remembrance of the Affair, Lies Beneath Her Subconscious, Norman's True Wicked Ways Lie Beneath His Facade as Helpful Scientist Good Guy.
SPEAKER_01:Okay, I have to hear anyone who's never watched it and watches it now, what they think.
SPEAKER_00:Yes. All right, guys, if you're listening, please DM us at Babes and Bookland Pod on Instagram. I love hearing from you guys. What did you think of this movie? And yeah, if you hadn't seen it and then we told you to watch it, and then I guess you listened to the show and got to this point. Uh, let us know what you think. P, I love you. Thank you so much for joining me today, for squeezing me in between your meetings so we could get this October bonus episode recorded. Happy Halloween.
SPEAKER_01:Love you.
SPEAKER_00:Bye.
SPEAKER_01:Bye, boo.
