Bacon starts the film as a cocky non-believer ( SHUN THE NON-BELIEVER) rocking some type of accent that blends Boston by way of douchebag. Within the first twenty minutes some type of repressed psychic abilities storyline is being presented and the hypnotized segments are something out of Flatliners. Night because I think David Koepp jacked his story and presented a pissed-on version. Come to think of it, this movie is a little too close to the Sixth Sense than I’d like. There’s the bizarre ghost girl pleading for help but can’t be understood. There’s the creepy little kid who can see dead people. Tom is introduced stating emphatically that he wished he wasn’t so “ordinary.” Well gee, wonder how the events of the film will take him beyond being ordinary? Tom even says before being hypnotized “What’s the worst that could happen?” Seriously! Seeing as how this wasn’t in the romance section of Blockbuster I’m assuming there’s a LOT that can go wrong. The problem is all the beats of this movie are established in the film’s opening minutes. As he gets out of the tub he looks directly at the camera (aka the unseen person) and says “does it hurt to be dead?” I was thisclose to peeing my pants and thought “Hey, maybe this will be a good movie.” How wrong and naive was I. We meet little Jake as he’s talking to someone who we can’t see. The opening scenes of the film provide the only horror you’ll see throughout the entire hour and 45 minutes. As Tom digs deeper into who the girl is, he discovers his son Jake (Zachary David Cope) is also psychic. When his wife’s psychic sister Lisa (Illeana Douglas) hypnotizes him and leaves a post-hynoptic suggestion to “open his mind,” Tom awakens with horrific visions of a young woman beckoning him to help her. Tom Witzky ( Kevin Bacon) is a family man with a beautiful wife and young son. In rereading my notes I had a lot of exclamation and question marks and I started yelling aloud to the television. The only way I could recommend this is if you did gathered a bunch of friends together and just bashed it. Stir of Echoes falls right before The Box but WELL below anything resembling a good movie. Out of the films/books I’ve read there’s the good ( Legend of Hell House which I reviewed awhile back), the decent ( What Dreams May Come is a worthy effort), the “great movie but it’s not at all the book” ( I Am Legend), and the utter shit ( The Box). I have the Matheson book, and several other Matheson novels, and from what I’ve seen Hollywood just doesn’t know how to adapt the man’s work. Today’s film is the 1999 Stir of Echoes, a loose (and boy is that meaning applied here with a paintbrush) adaptation of the Richard Matheson book of the same name.
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