Stir of Echoes (1999) Reviewed by Eugene Novikov http://www.ultimate-movie.com/ Member: Online Film Critics Society
*** out of four
"What's it like to be dead?"
Starring Kevin Bacon, Kathryn Erbe, Illeana Douglas. Rated R.
And so the horror craze of 1999 continues. The audience is hungry for more fright-fests and Hollywood is more than ready to deliver them. David Koepp, screenwriter of such flashy nothings as The Lost World and Mission: Impossible is the latest to take a stab at this most lucrative of genres and his Stir of Echoes is entertaining and, for the first time this year, scary, though far too conventional. There have already been complaints about the film Echoing The Sixth Sense and they are not all together incorrect, though Stir of Echoes is a far more light-hearted effort than its poignant predecessor.
Kevin Bacon's "center of the movie universe" status (popularized by the "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon" party game, in which a player would try to connect Bacon to another actor in six movies or less) has been fading, of late, what with this being only his second "major" motion picture since Sleepers in 1996 (unless you count Picture Perfect, but you'd have to be insane). This is probably a step down from Wild Things in clout, but certainly a step up in quality.
Bacon plays Tom Witzky, a Chicago electrician, living with his wife (the magnificent, though heretofore inconspicuous Kathryn Erbe) and his young son. He notices that his son talks to someone who isn't there (in fact, this is the basis for a staggeringly effective opening scene) but passes it off, until something happens that opens his eyes. Now, Tom is introduced as a harshy cynical fella, so when at a party his sister-in- law starts talking about feats performed with the help of hypnosis, he dares her to hypnotize him. Not surprisingly it works. Another wonderful scene, and before we know it, he is out of stasis -- but something isn't quite right.
He starts seeing visions. Scary visions. Violent visions. They pop up at the oddest times. Then they disappear. At first Tom is scared, but he soon becomes curious. Who is his son talking to? What's happening to that strange girl in his dreams? What's that song he keeps hearing? How can he make all this go away?
Scream's got nothing on this baby. In terms of jolts, Stir of Echoes is second to none; a vertable jump-o-rama. In that sense, this is the first "scary" movie this year: neither Sixth Sense nor The Blair Witch Project managed this sort of visceral thrill (though these two were going for psychological suspense rather than "Boo" moments).
Another thing Stir of Echoes has going for it is its unexpectedly witty script. Not only is it full of one-liners, some generic, some not, but it also has some funny characters. Tom's new-age sister-in-law has some truly guffaw-worthy moments, and Tom's own blind determination towards the end of the film is presented in an unconventionally innocuous way. The film manages to keep up an extraordinary level of suspense while maintaining an easy-going and unpretentious attitude. The action is ominous and somehow gleefully facetious at the same time.
Plot comparisons to The Sixth Sense are not only inevitable, they're justified. Stir of Echoes can not be faulted for being a "rip-off", per se, as it was the first of the two to be filmed, but to those not made aware of that crucial detail, the similarities between the two will seem suspicious, at best. The most prevalent parallel, of course, is of a young kid who talks to ghosts. Another: both films involve a murdered girl whose ghost appears to the main character and wants him to do something for her. The two movies are so uncannily similar in some respects that I'm forced to wonder whether the two screenwriters aren't roommates.
Of course to those (few) who didn't see The Sixth Sense none of this will matter one bit. Standing on its own, this is pretty good stuff: an entertaining and reasonably frightening thriller that, quite shamelessly, makes you laugh and jump almost at the same time. If you did see Sixth Sense, I'm going to say that this one is only worth paying to see if you are willing to put the Bruce Willis movie out of your head for two hours. It isn't a fun experience if you're subconciously forced to constantly make comparisons to something you've seen before. It also isn't particularly fair to this gem of a thriller, which, I shall remind you once more, was filmed before its unwitting companion. ©1999 Eugene Novikov‰
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/ Before you buy.
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