Stir of Echoes Review
by Akiva Gottlieb (akiva AT excite DOT com)September 30th, 1999
Stir Of Echoes **
rated R
Artisan Entertainment
99 minutes
starring Kevin Bacon, Kathryn Erbe, Ileana Douglas, Liza Weil, Kevin Dunn, Conor O'Farrell, Jenny Morrison, Zachary David Cope based on the novel "A Stir Of Echoes" by Richard Matheson written and directed by David Koepp
"The Sixth Sense" is still racking up the dough at the box office, and already we have a cheap rip off of it. However, David Koepp's "Stir Of Echoes" doesn't fail merely because of its $250 million shadow. "Stir Of Echoes" fails because it's a poor effort by everyone involved.
Well, David Koepp has scripted some of the major blockbusters of all time ("Jurassic Park", "Men In Black") and from what I've heard, his directorial debut, "The Trigger Effect", was a fine, if underrated, film. But "Stir Of Echoes", adapted from the cult classic novel by Richard Matheson, takes none of the risks that the overrated "Sixth Sense" does.
Tom Witzky (Kevin Bacon) is an "ordinary" construction worker in Chicago who writes music in his spare time. He has a fine relationship with his wife, Maggie (Kathryn Erbe) and his quiet son Jake (Zachary David Cope). But one night, his sister in law (Ileana Douglas), an amateur hypnotist, hypnotizes him at his request. The hypnosis sends him on a downward spiral, and she opens up parts of his mind that were closed before.
Tom starts to see things; quick flashes of dead bodies, fingers falling off, and other stuff like that. His son calmly assures him that everything will be alright, and it is then that Tom realizes that Jake sees these things, and he speaks with them too. What are these things? Dead people, of course. Little boys in movies never "see dead people", right? Uh-huh.
Coincidentally, it turns out that these dead people are merely trying to communicate something to someone in the real world. Tom and Jake's "mission" is to help a dead girl named Samantha (Jenny Morrison) get in touch with her family (her sister is played by Liza Weil, the amazing young actress from "Whatever") so that they can figure out why she has been "missing" for the past few months.
At the start, the setup isn't that bad, but then, the filmmakers decide to have the film self destruct in five seconds. And self destruct it does. "Stir Of Echoes" turns from promising thriller to B horror movie pulp. Kevin Bacon's Tom becomes some sort of a madman and the film spins wildly out of control.
"Stir Of Echoes" may look and sound like "The Sixth Sense", but it feels like a spoof. Kevin Bacon is gritty and tough as nails, but he just doesn't cut it as a leading man. I hate to bash child actors, but Zachary David Cope has none of Haley Joel ("Sixth Sense") Osment's guts, and neither does the film itself.
I know it's unfair to compare the two films, since "Stir Of Echoes" was probably made before "Sixth Sense", but when you see movies with such similar plotlines, it's hard to resist. "Stir Of Echoes" is watchable most of the time, but David Koepp seems to have learned a little too much from the disaster movies he's used to writing. He directs this low budget film as if it's an action extravaganza, especially during the wildly preposterous ending.
While "Sixth Sense" at least made its conflict believable, "Stir Of Echoes" just seems to be along for the ride. Instead of being scary, it's just downright disturbing. Towards the end, the film becomes laughably bad, which is fun in an "Evil Dead" kind of way, but when Kevin Bacon and his son start digging in their backyard because a movie screen told him to, I have to draw the line. I'm giving "Stir Of Echoes" an undeserving two stars, but only because I may have enjoyed it more had I seen it a couple months ago. How sad.
a review by Akiva Gottlieb
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