Michelle hears some noises in the house, after a while see finds out that its a missing girl, the girl is trying to get revenge for her death. First off, I would like to say that Michelle Phieffer is great in this movie; she carries her character strongly from start to finish. And unfortunately The movie opens with Pfeiffer and Ford taking their daughter to college, thus leaving them alone in their house for the first time since they were married.
The daughter is actually the product of Pfeiffer’s first marriage to a musician who now dead (by what means I can’t remember, nor does it matter). Ford is a successful research scientist at a university in New England as was his even more famous father. He is on the verge of finishing a major paper, which requires him to spend endless hours at the office, leaving Pfeiffer alone in their vast home. It is a mystery, as a bored Pfeiffer spies on her new neighbors, a troubled couple who fight a lot. Around the same time that the next-door wife seemingly disappears, Pfeiffer starts experiencing poltergeist-like activity in her house.
Doors won’t stay shut, photos fall from ledges, and finally she starts seeing the image of a pretty blonde woman in reflections in fogged-up mirror and in the water of a full bathtub. Pfeiffer and Ford have a good and believable chemistry, and there are some genuine thrills generated when Pfeiffer is alone in the house. Anyway, eventually Pfeiffer discovers that in fact the next-door neighbors wife is alive and well. Except for one small thing, the blonde ghost is still causing trouble in the house. Pfeiffer begins to see a psychiatrist (the always reliable Joe Morton), believing that maybe she’s suffering from some kind of empty-nest syndrome, but she soon realizes that the ghost is real and she sets out to find out who she is and why she’s bugging her.
ConclusionAs Hatchet Harry said the story starts out with Pfeiffer’s daughter from a previous marriage going off to college. She’s dealing with the whole empty-nest syndrome, when the new neighbors next door start fighting, and the wife disappears. Pfeiffer is convinced that he’s murdered her and starts spying on the husband who is now living alone in the house. Shortly after strange things start happening around the Pfeiffer-Ford house. You know, your usual haunting type activities like doors opening on their own, pictures falling off tables, radios switching on at full blast, bathtubs filling by themselves, yadda, yadda, yadda.
It all works and you could feel the tension building in the audience. A year ago, Dr. Norman Spencer (Harrison Ford) betrayed his beautiful wife Claire (Michelle Pfeiffer). But the affair is over and Claire’s oblivious to the truth; Norman’s life and marriage seem perfect–so perfect that when Claire tells him she’s hearing mysterious voices and seeing a young woman’s wraithlike image in their home, he dismisses her mounting terror as delusion.
However, as Claire moves closer to the truth, it becomes clear that this apparition will not be dismissed, and has come back for Dr. Norman Spencer. . . and his beautiful wife
