Stir of Echoes

Rating:
Summary: ~A Great Way to Waste Your Time~
Review: I despised this movie. I watched it with a few friends, and I ended up shivering and nauseas when it was over. This is just another movie that tries to be "scary" by adding some violence and gore... It's absolutely ridiculous.
The plot is somewhat predictable. Even though parts of it were frightening without blood, they were few compared to the simply gross sections.
If you want to watch some good ole rape and murder scenes, this movie's for you!

Rating:
Summary: Excellent movie on it's own
Review: Why people compare this to the SIXTH SENSE is beyond me. The psychic powers of the son occupy little more than a few minutes of screen time, and the most dramatic event associated with the son, the "feathers" scene, was more of a directorial attempt to avoid having to kill the child.
This production has more unseen tricks than one can talk of in a small review, but suffice to say, the commentary track does have a lot of gems. Hopefully I can get the special edition, since I have some high expectations for that product.
Anyways, this is a genre film, so it has common themese to a bunch of films, and is only very superficially in the vein of the SIXTH SENSE.
It's a great film to watch, and Kevin Bacon does a great job.

Rating:
Summary: Surprisingly good
Review: OK, I'm not a Kevin Bacon fan - but I have to say this is very good movie.

Scary (at least moderately so), suspenseful (very), and deals with a variety of interesting elements (hypnotism-induced awareness, ghostly manipulation of physical objects, "place memory" of past events, and more).

A very different film from 6th sense (although that also had an actor that I'm not impressed with - B.W. - I enjoyed that too.)




Rating:
Summary: Truly Scary and Suspenseful
Review: There was so much press over "The Sixth Sense" when it came out that critics and audiences generally ignored "Stir of Echoes;" too bad, because "Stir of Echoes" is actually scarier than "The Sixth Sense." "The Sixth Sense" is slower-paced, and relies on a couple of plot devices to give viewers slowly growing chills with a couple of jumps along the way, leading to the final revealing moment where you have to re-evaluate everything that you saw. "Stir of Echoes" is an in-your-face ghost story.

Tim Witzky (Kevin Bacon) is a blue-collar worker who has recently moved to an older urban neighborhood. The house he is renting is a beautiful home. The neighborhood seems normal and friendly. Initially you wonder what could be so scary about this neighborhood.

Son Jake (Zachary David Cope) talks to someone who obviously is not there. Of course, many children have invisible friends and we chalk the experience up to what we know. What becomes unusual is when Tim is hypnotized during a party. Suddenly, Tim experiences unusual and bizarre nightmares, including situations where he not only sees things, but experiences things physically.

Tim tries to have the hypnotist undo whatever she did, but she is unable to do so, because she really does not know what she did. Tim's visions increase as he becomes obsessed with more than finding out the source of the visions. For some reason he is being compelled by a ghost to do something, for a reason that he has yet to understand. As Tim's obsession/compulsion grows, his wife Maggie (Kathryn Erbe) begins to think that Tim is either insane or heading in that direction.

As we follow Tim's descent into madness, a number of occurrences convince us that either his insanity is quite vivid (for the skeptics among us), or he truly is seeing a ghost. Eventually we are convinced that he is seeing a ghost, which makes his situation even more frightening, because the ghost becomes insistent to the extent of putting Tim and possibly Jake's life in danger.

This movie contains sufficient psychological thrills in combination with jump out from behind the corner scares and an ending that I did not see coming to give it advantages over "The Sixth Sense." This movie is not necessarily better than "The Sixth Sense" because it is a different kind of movie. However, it is its equal in setting up an eerie atmosphere and superior in providing several moments that gave me a nice jump (when was the last time you saw a dead girl unexpectedly sitting next to you on the couch?).

Kevin Bacon provides an incredible performance in this movie. I consider Kevin's performance superior to Bruce Willis's because of the intensity of Kevin's character, and the need to play someone who appeared on the borderline of being insane yet knowing that he was under a terrible compulsion that he did not control. The combination of emotions Kevin attained was more difficult than Bruce Willis's rather staid role.

The supporting actors completed the rather mundane scenario, which could have been acted out in your neighborhood, just around the corner. The people seemed so real, so normal. Their dreams and actions were those of people that likely you know. It is their very normalcy and that this story takes place in a suburb rather than an isolated location that makes this story scarier.

This movie is one of the best ghost stories I have watched, and I consider it to be one of the best ghost stories of all time. Well worth watching more than once and having in your horror movie collection.


Rating:
Summary: Open Your Mind ... Now
Review: As a hypnotist, the main attraction for me in this movie were bits dealing with hypnosis and Kevin Bacon did a great acting job.

All the fun begins after Kevin Bacon, unhappy with his life, becomes hypnotized, just as an experiment and is given a suggestion to open his mind. He begins having visions which won't leave him alone, until he chooses to do something about them. He doesn't like this new gift and would be happy to get rid of it, but there is no way out than to go ahead and get to the bottom of it and follow what he's instructed to do. With each new step, he unveiles the crime that was done many years ago. The movie is a suspenseful horror movie, but it does have some humorous elements.

Rating:
Summary: Sixth Sense of Kevin Bacon
Review: Although it doesn't seem as original as The Sixth Sense, Kevin Bacon carries it off. A fun scary popcorn thinking flick.

Rating:
Summary: Kevin Bacon does fine in a Richard Matheson ghost story
Review: "Stir of Echoes" succeeds because of the talents of a pair of individuals who are under-appreciated in Hollywood. First, there is Richard Matheson, whose novel is adapted here by writer-director David Koepp. Just in terms of novels that have been made into movies Matheson has on his resume "I Am Legend," "What Dreams May Come," "Bid Time Return" (filmed as "Somewhere in Time"), "Someone Is Bleeding," "Hell House," and "The Shrinking Man" (which the babysitter is reading in this movie). There we can talk about 16 episodes of "The Twilight Zone," the scripts for the television movies "Duel" and "The Night Talker," and the screenplays for "House of Usher" and "The Pit and the Pendulum." Matheson should be mentioned in the same breath with Rod Serling and Stephen King, and have his name appear before the title, but after all these years I am left with the feeling that the only ones who have always recognized Matheson as being that good are fellow writers like Serling and King.

The other person whose reputation with audiences is not as good as it is with his peers is Kevin Bacon. The actor held his own with Oscar winners Sean Penn and Tim Robbins in "Mystic River," and while there were certainly reviews that noted how well he did in his less flashier role, you know that most audience members cannot think of him with (a) figuring out how to get from whatever movie they are watching to one in which he starred, (b) humming the theme from "Footloose," or (c) both. In "Stir of Echoes" it is Bacon's performance of a working stiff that grounds Matheson's ghost story in the world of the living, which is what makes it chilling.

There is a sense in which "Stir of Echoes" is a combination of "The Sixth Sense" and "Mystic River," but simply on the level where we have a ghost story set in a working class neighborhood. Tom (Bacon) is married to Maggie (Kathryn Erbe), and they have a five-year-old named Jake (Zachary David Cope). They never notice that their son talks to somebody who is not there and asks questions about whether it hurts to be dead. One night at a party Tom agrees to be hypnotized by Maggie's sister, Lisa (Illeana Doulgas), who plays around with the idea of being a New Age mystic. When Tom comes out of his trance he is not quite sure what happened while he was under. But when he starts seeing the ghost of a young girl (Jenny Morrison), he knows it has something to do with being hypnotized and eventually Lisa confesses that she did make a post-hypnotic suggestion that she thought would improve her brother-in-law.

Tom's life starts coming apart as he becomes obsessed with finding out what the ghost wants, especially once he learns that her name is Samantha and that she was a girl from the neighborhood who disappeared the year before. Tom never wanted to be famous, but he is bothered by the fact that his life is so ordinary. Well, those days (and nights) are behind him now. It is up to his wife to have a chance encounter with the person, Neil the Cop (Eddie Bo Smith Jr.) who explains what has happened: a switch has been thrown and Tom is now a receiver. If he does not do what the ghost requires, then he will never be free. But Tom does not understand what is required and risks losing not only his job, but his friends and family.

The rule in films such as this one is to express madness by going over the top, but Bacon heads in the opposite direction. As he is confronted with nightmarish visions he becomes more withdrawn. Characters haunted by ghosts are rarely so soft spoken. Bacon's choice is perfect for both the character and the story, for when Samantha is able to communicate a single word, "Dig," it reinforces the idea that the truth of this tale is buried not only with Tom's house, but within himself as well. His acceptance of what he is being asked to do has elements is more than weary resignation, for he understands that there is a wrong to be righted.

How good of a ghost story you think "Stir of Echoes" ends up having to do with how far ahead you get of Tom in his quest to put everything together. Once Tom starts digging he spends a lot of time digging in the wrong places, and while he is busy doing that pieces start to fall into place. Koepp plays with us a bit with regards to what is really happening to Tom and his visions. The ones from the past are easy to figure out, but there are also looks into the future that can fake you out, which can be annoying as well. But Bacon's performance makes up for these flaws and even if the endgame of "Stir of Echoes" takes the story back to familiar ground, it is still a lot better than most of the horror films I have seen since this 1999 film came out.

Rating:
Summary: Scary and Unique
Review: I thought this movie was well written. It's not a blood and guts horror film, it's a ghost story (I thought the ghost was pretty scary too).

It's by far not the most scariest movie I've ever scene, but it's scary in all the right places. No cheesiness, no blood and gore...just a well written, ghost story.

Rating:
Summary: Intense psychological thriller
Review: Although it was branded as a variation on "The Sixth Sense", "Stir of Echoes" (based on Richard Matheson's terrific novel "A Stir of Echoes" I guess the "A" got lost on the way to the box office)focuses on what director/writer David Koepp does best. Koepp's film createa an intense psychological thriller where everyone believes the main character is crazy except us. We know what he knows and, as a result, we fear for his sanity almost as much as his loved ones because we know he isn't insane.

Kevin Bacon gives a startling and powerful performance as a Tom Witzky a regular family guy who, after being hynotized by his sister-in-law (Illeana Douglas) begins seeing visions that suggest a murdered girl's ghost is trying to communicate with him. He's driven to try and uncover who committed the murder but, more importantly, help put her soul to rest before he loses his mind and his family. Koepp's film eschews conventional "horror" film conventions because it isn't a horror film at all.

Overlooked when it was first released, "Stir of Echoes" has one of Bacon's best, most intense performances. The imaginative, sharp direction also highlights Matheson's haunting ghost story. This new special edition has most of the features of the earlier release plus a number of new featurettes including "The Mind's Eye: Beneath the Trance", "Sight of Spirits: Channeling the Paranormal", "Special Effects Featurette" plus deleted scenes, a production design featurette and other extras. We also get Director David Koepp's original commentary track from the previous edition, the music video "Breathe" by Moist and the two making of featurettes.

The transfer itself appears to be a new transfer with slightly better image quality than the previous edition. The exceptional soundtrack also has a new 6.1 DTS commentary plus a Dolby Digital 5.1 EX remix of the soundtrack as well. The sound is crisp without a hint of the compression that frequently mars most transfers. Overall, a terrific transfer plus some nice extras. There's also a booklet with the chapter stops and some interesting trivia on the making of the movie.

Rating:
Summary: Scary,with some great acting.
Review: David Koepp who wrote and directed "Secret Window" and has written movies like "Panic Room", "Spider-Man",and "Jurrasic Park",made a pretty darned genius film that was pretty underated.
Keopp like M.Night Shyamalan relies on sound effects and quick snippets of gory things,like fingernails snapping off someones hand to scare you but Koepp makes it work.Kevin Bacon gives a great performance,I mean there's no way he would get an Oscar nomination for this movie or anything but it's a good performance. Bacon plays Tom. A blue collar man with a wife and boy who acts rather strangeley,talking to himself or is it someone else.One night at a party his hypnotist sister-in-law hypnotizes him and after that he begins seeing and hearing horrifying visions of a dead girl.What happens next is basically a cliche,with Tom attempting to discover the secret of the ghost.
While his son continues to talk to her. I bought the original version but when this version came out,I bought this version and sold the other one and this is definitley a better DVD. It's got
some of the same things,commentary by David Koepp and such(which people should listen too). But it has some new,improved features.
The case is rather loose and maddening but whatever. Illeana Scott is great in the film as is the little boy who plays Kevin Bacon's son. Now another thing I must mention is that the film isn't really a mystery,it's not to hard to figure out what's happening but,the film is really good either way.B+,