Stir of Echoes Review
by "Shane Burridge" (sburridge AT hotmail DOT com)March 3rd, 2000
Stir of Echoes (1999) 99m
In summary, this film can be outlined in a single sentence, which should be enough to trigger the warning SPOILER AHEAD in most people's minds. I won't divulge its premise here if you've managed to avoid it thus far, but I will say this: for a basic story, STIR OF ECHOES does a pretty good job of looking like unfamiliar territory.
There's also a hint of the familiar involved as well, which is why I like this film: it constantly refers to its title. Kevin Bacon is a self-confessed 'ordinary' working stiff who is put under hypnosis as part of a parlor trick and then finds himself haunted by hallucinations. Writer-director David Koepp puts his own spin on Richard Matheson's novel, revealing new characters and snippets of information in an effectively serpentine manner. Bacon's visions are somehow connected to real events either happening in the past, the future, or the very present. Sometimes they are unsettling flashforwards into his own life, other times unfocused scenes from places and people unknown to him (the film's one irony is that Bacon's occupation as a lineman requires him to 'make connections' and maintain lines of communication). It's all very intriguing, but Koepp, more experienced as a writer than a director, makes a conscious choice not to sustain it. Aware that there is only so much mystery an audience can take, he turns the second half of the story into a sort of practical reaction to the first. By this point Koepp has been generous enough with his choice of visions to enable us to piece together the underlying story and even the pattern of events likely to follow. In what amounts to a cleverly subtle crossover the audience is unwittingly placed into the protagonist's shoes, having the required amount of prescience to predict key images and scenes of its own. And we have been very neatly prepped for this by the hypnosis scene, during which Bacon is told to imagine he is sitting in a darkened movie theatre (of course the screen turns black at this point, and it becomes *us* in that subjective chair), just one of many moments in the movie, creepy, funny, or just nifty, that may manage a smirk of delight from you.
It's what is operating below the surface that gives STIR OF ECHOES edginess. Ask yourself why you feel this film seems to keep pushing itself anxiously forward and you might notice the restless backdrop surrounding its characters. There is a sense of great masses of people journeying and relocating themselves, as if the voices of the unconscious are forever pressing around us. The crossover/connection/journey motif is emphasized by background traffic noise, trains roaring by and passenger jets flying overhead; a line of stalled cars causes a precognition from Bacon which in turn leads to a crowded bus station; and even at the film's end, when all seems resolved, the last word we see drawn to the camera is 'Moving'. Significantly, the final frames linger on reflections from the windows of a moving car, the soundtrack implying that this particular journey is far from over.
STIR OF ECHOES has drawn much comparison with THE SIXTH SENSE, but only because of its timing. The more obvious match, if you have to make one, is THE SHINING. Here too we have a boy connected to the spirit world by an invisible friend; fleeting visions of the past and future; a family/marriage under stress; a father who shares a diluted version of his young son's telepathic powers; an older black man who recognizes these powers on sight; a father becoming unhinged (when he snaps at his wife in the back yard, Bacon seems a lot like Jack Nicholson - otherwise his performance is completely his own, and a finely-tuned one at that) and a bewildered wife/mother armed with a knife. The last scene of the film needs only an intermission to separate it from the opening shots of THE SHINING, which could be a logical extension and conclusion to the fledging powers at work in this story. The echoes continue to reverberate. In-joke: the family's babysitter reads a Matheson novel, 'The Shrinking Man'. I read 'A Stir of Echoes' several years ago, and have forgotten much of it except for some detail about a woman in a yellow raincoat….perhaps those echoes of long ago make me an ideal viewer for this film. I even owned the exact same paperback as the babysitter. I'm sitting in a darkened movie theater….I am getting sleepy….
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Originally posted in the rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup. Copyright belongs to original author unless otherwise stated. We take no responsibilities nor do we endorse the contents of this review.
