Harrison Ford and Michelle Pfeiffer play, respectively, Norman and Claire Spencer. They're a happily married couple that lives in a beautiful lakeside home in Vermont. She's a retired musician and he's a genetics researcher living his father's shadow. When we meet them, they are saying goodbye to Claire's daughter from a previous marriage as she heads off to college, leaving just her and Norman in the house (with her husband at work quite a bit, it's pretty much her alone).

Well, sort of. As soon as her daughter is out of the house (and the picture), strange occurrences begin to happen. Claire begins hearing noises and seeing some pretty terrifying (at least to her, not this viewer) visions. A lengthy bout of these other-worldly encounters first leads her to the place most of us would hopefully wind up: at the shrink's office (said psychiatrist is played here by Joe Morton). Claire believes that these events are connected to Mary Feur (Miranda Otto), the wife of the new couple who has moved in next door. After a few weeks of seeing her and her husband Warren (James Remar) fighting, she has mysteriously vanished, and Claire feels that she has been murdered and her spirit has returned.

That, however, is not the case. Mary is indeed alive and well, and the disturbances in Claire's house (that always seem to happen when Norman is not home) have escalated. Claire soon discovers that the unearthly visitor is connected to a missing college student who disappeared around the same time of Claire's auto accident and that Norman was having an affair with this particular student. This does not bode well for a fun time at the Spencer's household.

It doesn't really bode well for a fun time at the movies for you or I, either. While the film is nice to look at (thanks to Don Burgess' handsome widescreen photography), Robert Zemeckis' directing drains the film of any life it has, with the first hour being nothing more than a Rear Window clone that serves as a red herring the size of the shark in Jaws.

He also seems to be a bit confused when it comes to applying suspense to a story. Believing that a slow moving camera will build tension, Zemeckis instead winds up dragging out what should have been a 100-minute movie into a protracted 130-minute endurance test, draining the last remaining stands of life out of his story. His over-abundant use of sound effects become as predictable as the last act of the film.

That predictability is more the fault of the screenplay by Clark Gregg, which is a sad mix of different horror and suspense film elements and paper-thin characters that we could care less about. Claire, the central character, is never given a chance to develop. In the first act, she's a nosy neighbor. The second act, a disturbed Nancy Drew and the third, she becomes The Victim, all the while suffering from otherworldly scares and noises. Yawn. As for Norman, he's not even around for most of the film until the latter half and when it is revealed what his role is in all of these proceedings (aside from his screwing a student), it is less of a surprise for the viewer as it is an example of last-minute rewriting in order to accommodate a big-name star who has taken on the role.

Sadly, those big stars can't do much to bring those characters to life. Ford tries his best, and has some fun in the last act (some, not a lot), but it really doesn't add up to much. As for Pfeiffer, in the majority of her work, she seems to be playing, well, herself. Her facial expression seems to be stuck somewhere between bursting out crying and being in utter pain. Hmmm. I guess she could feel what I was going through watching the film.

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