STIR OF ECHOES
A film review by Mark R. Leeper
Capsule: This story is based on a lesser novel
by horror master Richard Matheson. It involves
ghosts and telepathy, is atmospheric, and told with
a great deal of tension. Unfortunately the plot
could have used a few twists and surprises. The
story is much too straightforward for its own good.
Rating: 6 (0 to 10), +1 (-4 to +4)
As I was sitting at the Toronto Film Festival last year waiting for the screening of APT PUPIL I spoke to the woman next to me who claimed to really love horror, especially Stephen King. I asked if she was also a fan of Richard Matheson. "Who?" Richard Matheson is one of the most important names in American horror fiction, TV, and cinema. She pulled a copy of Steven King's DANSE MACABRE, a study of American horror, from a bag she carried and found that yes, there were references to Richard Matheson. I should hope so. Matheson may not have the name recognition of a King or a Koontz, but he has been behind everything important in horror and some spilling over into fantasy and science fiction since the 1950s. Both King and Koontz freely admit large debts to Matheson. Matheson was really the major force to move the setting of horror stories out of castles in Eastern Europe and into American suburbia.
Matheson first got involved with film when his novel THE SHRINKING MAN was adapted into the film THE INCREDIBLE SHRINKING MAN. Only Rod Serling provided more stories that were dramatized on THE TWILIGHT ZONE. Matheson wrote most of Roger Corman's film adaptations of Poe in the 60s. He scripted THE DEVIL RIDES OUT (a.k.a. THE DEVIL'S BRIDE) one of the best films from Hammer Films. Matheson adapted the novel THE NIGHT STALKER for TV. He wrote THE LEGEND OF HELL HOUSE and SOMEWHERE IN TIME, based on his own novels. He wrote DUEL based on his own story. DUEL was one of the first films to bring serious attention to Stephen Spielberg. The lady in Toronto entered the theater passing a large standup ad for WHAT DREAMS MAY COME adapted from the novel by Richard Matheson. That is about 45 years that Matheson has been a force to reckon with in horror in the visual media. STIR OF ECHOES is based on the novel A STIR OF ECHOES by Richard Matheson.
Tom Witzky (played by Kevin Bacon) is a sort of lower middle class telephone lineman in an older suburb of Chicago. His main entertainments involve beer and sports. Both he and his wife Maggie (Kathryn Erbe) are vaguely dissatisfied with their downbeat existence. Their son Jake (Zachary David Cope) seems to live in his own world talking to an imaginary friend, Samantha. Maggie has a male-hating friend Lisa (Illeana Douglas) who is in training to be a hypno- therapist. One night at a party Tom makes fun of Lisa's profession and Lisa suggests he allow her to hypnotize him. She leaves him with a post-hypnotic suggestion to be more "leave his mind open." The suggestion works too well. Tom's mind is open to more than just a few new ideas; it is open to some forces in the universe better left alone. He starts having disturbing and graphic nightmares, continuations of visions he had under hypnosis, and worse, now he sees Samantha himself. And she looks to him like a walking corpse. Tom starts to associate this ghostly apparition with a neighbor girl named Samantha who disappeared from the neighborhood some months before. Slowly he becomes obsessed with proving his visions of Samantha are real and that she must have been murdered in his house.
David Koepp has been a writer on several big-ticket films of the recent years including CARLITO'S WAY, JURASSIC PARK, THE SHADOW, MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE, THE TRIGGER EFFECT (which he also directed), THE LOST WORLD: JURASSIC PARK, and MEN IN BLACK. Here he both writes and directs; though the film is based on a novel by Richard Matheson. He does have a nice hand with mood as he keeps the lighting subdued and sets the film in an older neighborhood to create more atmosphere. The latter is a curious move on his part having written the screenplay. The novel, written in 1958, is set in a then modern suburb. The story could well have been set in the neighborhood where POLTERGEIST was set instead of this old Chicago neighborhood. But the script explicitly calls attention to the fact that the house is new or at least that the Witzkys are the first people who have ever lived in the house. The line makes no sense in a house this old. I also note with pleasure a nod to Richard Matheson in that a babysitter is reading his THE SHRINKING MAN. (And given that it is an old edition and was probably purchased in Chicago. The odds say she got it at the bookstore The Stars Our Destination.) The setting does not always work and a little doctoring of the script might have made the film make more sense.
This is a tense and atmospheric film. Kevin Bacon does a convincing job of playing the working class main character. But in the final analysis there is not much new in the film. To be memorable it would have to build up to something a little less prosaic. I rate it a 6 on the 0 to 10 scale and a +1 on the -4 to +4 scale.
Mark R. Leeper
mleeper@lucent.com
Copyright 1999 Mark R. Leeper
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