Stir of Echoes Review

Disclaimer: Contains spoilers!

Plot Summary: After being hypnotized, a man is haunted by the spirit of a girl that allegedly ran away from home.

Review: This is yet another underrated horror movie that fell under the radar due to poor timing. Coming out barely a month after "The Sixth Sense," and with an extremely similar premise, "Stir of Echoes" had a huge shadow looming over its head. While the story here isn't on par with "The Sixth Sense," it does pursue more scares and a tighter pace. Unfortunately, there is one major drawback to the experience: the characters do not react normally to the predicament they find themselves in. Something else worth noting is that this is based off a book by Richard Matheson who is most famous for writing "I Am Legend," but, to me, he's one of the core writers for "The Twilight Zone." It's just interesting how seemingly unrelated things tend to connect.

On the positive side for "Stir of Echoes" we must start with the commendable usage of scares. While the ghost could have used a more decayed makeup design, she does her job effectively. Sure, there are a lot of jump scares, but there are also great set pieces like the movie theater scene. What I really love is the way the story is set into motion to begin with--with the main character, Tom, being hypnotized as his means of being able to see ghosts; it's not something that's explored too often. Speaking of our lead, the role of Tom is probably one of Kevin Bacon's better performances; the guy nails unhinged quite well. The other actors are not bad too, but, I'll admit, the little kid is skating back and forth between that fragile line of annoying and acceptable. Finally, the tone and atmosphere are great--there are plenty of creative techniques used to give the film that classic ghost story vibe. The film isn't very faithful to the source material, but it does successfully capture the kind of mood older ghost stories established.

As for the negative aspects...like I mentioned, the characters simply do not have a normal response to anything. It's actually really fucking annoying after a certain point. For example, Tom is going insane trying to find the ghost's body--meanwhile, the wife, Maggie appears to accept this reality of ghosts being real yet she keeps wondering why Tom is acting strange?! It's like every scene is setting up the same reaction of discovering that ghosts are real over and over again. Same with the little kid able to see ghosts. The characters keep looking at him like he's nuts despite knowing the kid is one session with Bruce Willis away from saying "I see dead people." C'mon, son. Then we have contrivance moments like some random cop conveniently explaining everything. Plus, I can't forgive an alleged musician like Tom not recognizing "Paint It Black" from the goddamn stones! Seriously? Needless to say, there's a reason why this film was not held in the same regard as "The Sixth Sense."

Overall, this was one of the last, good, ghost stories made before the remake train took over the horror genre. You have fun scares, a creative story, and engaging characters to captivate you while offering up a mystery to unravel as you go. While there are considerable flaws that do detract, "Stir of Echoes" can still match up with it's contemporaries like "The Sixth Sense" and "The Others" quite readily. I know a lot of people have forgotten about this movie, or never knew it existed to begin with, so I'd recommend giving it a view as it's definitely worth your time.

Notable Moment: When Tom sees the ghost inside the movie theater. Although it's technically in his mind, and would have been amazing if done in reality, it's still an awesome scare with great execution.

Final Rating: 6.5/10