`BENEATH': HITCHCOCK BY WAY OF DE PALMA.

Byline: Bob Strauss Film Critic

What is it this summer? Directors who absolutely don't need to are suddenly acting like Brian De Palma, overloading their movies with Hitchcock references like they never had styles of their own.

First, John Woo lifts plot and wholesale scenes from ``Notorious'' for his sequel to (the - aha! - De Palma-directed) ``Mission: Impossible.'' Now Robert Zemeckis, creator of the cinema-savvy yet distinctively original ``Who Framed Roger Rabbit,'' ``Forrest Gump'' and ``Back to the Future'' movies, comes down with a severe case of Hitch homage heaves in his latest, the classy ghost story ``What Lies Beneath.''

A none-too-clever yet incorrigibly tricky, slow-moving thriller starring a coolly agitated Michelle Pfeiffer and a typically grumpy Harrison Ford, ``Lies'' doesn't only borrow from Hitchcock. It's also a sort of ``Post-Fatal Attraction'' that eventually employs every creaky door hinge, rumbling music cue and suspenseful red herring that Hollywood's canned in the last 40 or so years.

But the main show here, simply because it's so unavoidably obvious, is Spot The Alfred Influence. The whole first act is a kind of bucolic ``Rear Window,'' as Pfeiffer's Claire Spencer suspects her volatile new Vermont lakeside neighbor of doing away with his wife.

But anyone who's seen the film's giveaway trailer knows that that's not what's really responsible for all the mysterious picture-fallings, computer-bootings and bathtub-fillings that start occurring in Claire and her research professor husband Norman's (Ford) picturesque home without benefit of mortal action. Mist, drafts and rain seem to have moved in as well.

Pretty soon, we're getting spooky identity transfers by way of ``Vertigo.'' ``Beneath'' does for clawfoot tubs what ``Psycho'' did for showers - and in at least one sequence, does it shot-for-shot. And that long-standing controversy over ``Suspicion''? If you're not familiar with it, I don't want to spoil the one surprise the DreamWorks marketing department hasn't already. But if you do know what I'm talking about, let's just say that, finally, the matter gets settled here conclusively, if not entirely satisfactorily.

There are more general nods to the master, such as Alan Silvestri's very Bernard Herrmann score. Perhaps the most pleasant one is Pfeiffer herself, who brings a troubled but rarely overwrought humanity to the blond icon position. ``Beneath'' is primarily Claire's story, and Pfeiffer deftly balances defensiveness, vulnerability and a sense of humor about her increasingly outlandish situation as the heroine falls deeper into apparent insanity - and maintains as much dignity as could be expected when Claire learns that things are much, much worse than that.

Zemeckis has mentioned that he's quite proud to have gotten away with ``What Lies Beneath's'' deliberate pace and careful buildup in these short-attention-span, quick-payoff movie times. And while that isn't a bad thing, you wish that it had been done in the service of a more original story that actually followed its title's dictum and dove deeper into character motivations and interpersonal deceptions, rather than just repeatedly plunge people into bodies of water.

That movie might have been a real Hitchcock homage, instead of just a Brian De Palma one.

The facts

--The film: ``What Lies Beneath'' (PG-13; violence, language, sex).

--The stars: Michelle Pfeiffer, Harrison Ford, Diana Scarwid, James Remar, Miranda Otto, Amber Valletta.

--Behind the scenes: Directed by Robert Zemeckis. Written by Clark Gregg and Sarah Kernochan. Produced by Zemeckis, Steve Starkey and Jack Rapke. Released by DreamWorks Pictures.

--Running time: Two hours, 11 minutes.

--Playing: Citywide.

--Our rating: Two and one half stars.

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Michelle Pfeiffer stars as the increasingly agitated Claire Spencer, who is tormented by her husband's past, in ``What Lies Beneath.''