If you're looking for a quiet but scary, wintry ghost story - pass this one by.

You're better off renting The Changeling (Canadian 1979), a film of quiet ghostly scares. Atmospheric, suspenseful, thought-provoking. Or try Ghost Story (1981), a film with beautiful wintry scenes, and rich characters played by seasoned Hollywood Golden Age pros. The Changeling is a low-budget import, Ghost Story a big studio effort, yet both are excellent ghost films.

As for What Lies Beneath ... well, it's hardly worth sitting through two hours to find out.

Despite its length, its star cast and star director, What Lies Beneath has a smallish story. One trade critic compared it to a TV movie. True enough. What Lies Beneath feels as though it was written as a TV movie, until by some miracle Harrison Ford, Michelle Pfeiffer, and Robert Zemeckis were conned into it. Maybe one of them actually liked it, signed on, and then it snowballed.

Once those names signed on, distribution had to shift to the big screen. The script was lengthened to accommodate the theatrical distribution and star talent (important people require a film of important length). A few unnecessary special effects further padded the story.

It's still a small story. And not a terribly original or compelling one.

Harrison Ford and Michelle Pfeiffer are a trendy but classy New England couple. He's a college professor, she's a former concert cellist who gave up her career to raise a daughter. They're the sort of people who've lived or worked in Manhattan, attend museums, summer at the Hamptons or Martha's Vineyard, and try to find authenticity in a faux rustic lifestyle. Literate, sophisticated, a perfect New York Times Magazine kind of lifestyle in a small northeastern college town.

But things only appear perfect. Soon after their daughter is sent off to college, Michelle Pfeiffer imagines things. She thinks the couple next door may not be what they seem. She imagines murder. She imagines ghosts. But her initial suspicions prove wrong. So too her new suspicions. What Lies Beneath is full of twists and turns, and red herrings leading into more twists and turns, and still more red herrings and twists and turns.

Long before film's end, one wearies.

All the twists and turns and discoveries feel less suspenseful than artificial. It's as if Zemeckis thought: "Gee, there are so many ways this film can go ... so many good possibilities ... let's use them all!"

Yet despite its ponderous length and pretty cinematography, What Lies Beneath remains a Lifetime Original TV movie. Men are evil, concealing a "beast within." Women are victims — smart and brave! — but weakened by their one great fault: they just "love too much." (Another critic noted that whenever a man commits adultery in a Lifetime movie, it's inexcusable. When a women commits adultery, it's "a matter of the heart." In that sense, The Bridges of Madison County was also a TV movie).

It's hard to discuss this film without giving away its red herrings or surprise twists, or letting on which is which. Suffice to say that issues of spousal abuse and adultery and murder all emerge at various points. The title has two meanings: what lies beneath the veneer of domestic tranquility that neighbors present to the world, and the veneer of love and fidelity that couples present to each other. And what lies beneath the ground, and beneath the lake.