Drippy faucets and drippy nostrils!
Dave: This movie could’ve been worse, I guess. They could have hired uninspired college students to write the screenplay, which would have packed even more tired horror movie tropes into the already-too-long movie. They also could have cast someone like Tom Hanks to play the male lead in place of Harrison Ford, who was already badly miscast. But, really, they’d have to try hard to tank this thing further. Despite some good performances by Michelle Pfeiffer and Diana Scarwid along with some good jump scares, What Lies Beneath mostly alternated between laughable and predictable. The physical isolation of the fenced-off lake home and the social isolation of the protagonists’ slowly dissolving marriage seemed like afterthoughts as the script dove after the supernatural and ridiculous, letting the banal, insidious evil pass by. (️️⭐️⭐️)
Readers, I enjoy spicy food. Hot salsa? I’m there. Hot pepper sauce? I’ve got two bottles in the fridge. Habanero anything? Sign me up! But I’ve always had a bit of a hard time with wasabi. If I wanted something to make me cry and clean out my sinuses, I’d watch Beaches while using a Neti pot. So I was briefly concerned when Joe cheerily announced he’d made hot wasabi popcorn, the “hot” adjective seeming both unnecessary and taunting. While I did tear up and sneeze a few times while we ate, I also shoveled this in by the handful. The spice was tempered by butter and salt. There were some kernels that set my nasal cavities on fire, but most of them were delicious. (️️️️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2)
Joe: When Dave told me this was the film he had picked, I had the vaguest memory of seeing this in the theaters back in the day. After the movie was over, I dug out my scrapbook that has every ticket stub of every movie I've seen (until the stub became obsolete - stupid fucking technology ruining another fun thing). Sure enough, I saw the 6:45 PM showing on 7/30/2000 for the low, low price of $6. Anyway, I remembered absolutely nothing about this movie. I'm sure I was only tepid about it in 2000, and 23 (!) years later, I feel the same. Harrison Ford and Michelle Pfeiffer are both incredibly beautiful and talented, but their efforts are wasted in this boilerplate suspense film that has about two good scares in its bloated running time. There's some fairly fabulous camera work, but plot points are broadcast through clunky (and often downright godawful) dialogue. (⭐️⭐️1/2)
I love the Popcorn Board, but when they create "spicy" popcorns, I must remember that it's for typical white people from the Corn Belt. That is, it's spicy to people who don't like spicy. I might've squeezed a little extra wasabi into the mix. It wasn't enough to push it into true wasabi levels of sinus-burning deliciousness. I will make this again, and I will amp up the wasabi because this has potential to be 5 stars. As it stands: (⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️)
Popcorn recipe from: The Popcorn Board
What Lies Beneath on IMDB.
For some reason that movie (and Mothman Prophesies) were the first DVDs I ever owned.