Stir of Echoes
USA 1999
Reviewed by Demetrios Matheou
Synopsis
Our synopses give away the plot in full, including surprise twists.
The present. Tom Witzky, his wife Maggie and young son Jake have recently moved to Chicago. At a party, the sceptical Tom agrees to let Maggie's sister hypnotise him. While under, he sees indistinct but frightening images which continue after the the session.
He foresees the suicide of his friend Frank's son and the attempted kidnapping of his own son by a babysitter, which he prevents. Tom becomes withdrawn and psychotic, moping about the house trying to understand what the visions mean. He realises both he and Jake are able to see the ghost of a girl named Samantha, who disappeared some months before. Maggie encounters a Chicago cop who reveals that, like himself, Tom and Jake are "receivers", able to perceive the supernatural. Tom starts obsessively digging up the house. He finds Samantha's body and immediately has a vision of her murder by Frank's two sons. Frank arrives intending to kill Tom but, in a moment of guilt, shoots his remaining son and another accomplice instead. The Witzkys move away.
Review
From the opening scene, in which five-year-old Jake speaks eerily straight to camera, the similarities between Stir of Echoes and The Sixth Sense are strikingly apparent. Like Haley Joel Osment in last year's surprise hit, both Jake and his dad have a gift for supernatural perception which alienates them from others (here Tom's marriage is on the line as he cracks up), but which sends satisfying chills through the audience. In both films, the creepy but less than malign ghosts seek a kind of redemption.
However, there are enough differences to allow Stir of Echoes to stand on its own merits. For a start, writer/director David Koepp's source material is the novel by eminent horror writer Richard Matheson, which adds the patina of a conventional whodunnit thriller to the supernatural core of the story. Koepp relocates the action from California to Chicago, but the working-class milieu remains, adding a further, social dimension: Maggie is concerned not only that her man is losing his mind, but that he can ill afford to lose his job; Samantha's murder will destroy the district's strong sense of community.
Tom's discontent at the outset of the film, feeling he has underachieved by being no more than a telephone linesman, provides the fuel for the whole movie. Very early on, he states that, "I never wanted to be famous. I just never expected to be so ordinary." His extraordinary gift is a painful panacea. There are other satisfying themes. The fateful instruction from his acerbic sister-in-law when Tom is under hypnosis, to be more "open-minded", inadvertently opens the door for all kinds of unwelcome signals and intrusions. Beyond the pun, what's interesting is the difference in reaction of father and son towards what they see. Tom is disturbed, Jake unperturbed: demonstrating how a child's innocence and indeed open-mindedness are lost to life experience.
Although Samantha's ghost provides the film's heart-stopping moments, the supernatural plotting of the film is under-developed, not least in the exposition involving the psychic cop. Ultimately, it is Bacon's blue-collar conflict that resonates: his obsessive digging, reminiscent of Richard Dreyfuss' fun with mashed potato in Close Encounters of the Third Kind (Koepp scripted the Jurassic Park movies) evokes the notion, call it cinematic pipedream, that for ordinary people it takes something extraordinary to provide a sense of self-worth.
Credits
- Director
- David Koepp
- Producers
- Gavin Polone
- Judy Hofflund
- Screenplay
- David Koepp
- Based on the novel A Stir of Echoes by
- Richard Matheson
- Director of Photography
- Fred Murphy
- Editor
- Jill Savitt
- Production Designer
- Nelson Coates
- Music
- James Newton Howard
- ©Artisan Pictures Inc
- Production Companies
- Artisan Entertainment present a Hofflund/
Polone production - Executive Producer
- Michele Weisler
- Production Executive
- Hofflund/Polone:
- Vivian Cannon
- Production Co-ordinator
- Margaret J. Orlando
- Unit Production Manager
- Tom Busch
- Location Manager
- Wileen Dragovan
- Post-production Supervisor
- Robert Hoffman
- Assistant Directors
- Carla Corwin
- Don Julien
- Bob Schick
- Script Supervisor
- Barbara Tuss
- Casting
- Mary Colquhoun
- ADR Voice:
- Barbara Harris
- 2nd Unit Director of Photography
- Michael Kohnhorst
- Camera Operators
- Frank Perl
- Gerrit Dangremond
- Alan Thatcher
- Visual Effects
- Banned From The Ranch Entertainment
- Additional Editing
- John Axelrad
- Art Director
- David Krummel
- Set Designers
- Terry Baughman
- Hugo Santiago
- Gary Speckman
- Set Decorator
- Susie Goulder
- Lisa's Artwork
- Rosario Varela
- Storyboard Artist
- John Coven
- Costume Designer
- Leesa Evans
- Costume Supervisor
- Stella Cottini
- Key Make-up Artist
- Linda Melazzo
- Additional Make-up Artist
- Suzi Ostos
- Key Hair Artist
- Luny Hodges
- Additional Hair Artist
- Tara McCarthy
- Tattoo Design
- Derek T. Mullins
- Special Make-up Effects
- Tony Gardner
- Jim Beinke
- Make-up Effects Co-ordinator
- Scott Malchus
- Hand Piercing Supervisor
- Bob Jones
- Titles/Opticals
- Pacific Title/Mirage
- Orchestrations
- Jeff Atmajian
- James Newton Howard
- Electronic Score Producer
- J.T. Hill
- Supervising Music Editor
- Jim Weidman
- Music Editor
- David Olson
- Score Recordist/Mixer
- Shawn Murphy
- Orchestra Recordist
- Charlie Bouis
- Soundtrack
- "Nothing But the Shell" by Steve Wynn; "Breathe" by Moist; "Mirror Mirror" by Wild Strawberries; "Stay Awake" by Dishwalla; "Space Drama" by SuperSkank; "Rio De Generic" by The Mighty Turbans; "Paint It Black" by Gob; "It's Not the Spotlight" by Beth Orton; "Hello" by Poe; "Pump Off"
- Sound
- Tim Chau
- Sound Design
- Martin Maryska
- Production Sound Mixers
- Daniel J. Richter
- Scott Smith
- Re-recording Mixers
- Andy D'Addario
- Tim Chau
- Dubbing Recordists
- Neal Porter
- Chris Sparkes
- Supervising Sound Editors
- Todd Toon
- Carmen Baker
- Dialogue Editor
- Jim Brookshire
- Sound Effects Editors
- Adam Kopald
- Kurt N. Forshager
- Donald Malouf
- ADR
- Supervisor:
- G.W. Brown
- Performers:
- Matt Adler
- Greg Finley
- Jeff Fischer
- Barbara Iley
- Carlyle King
- John LaFayette
- David McCharen
- Richard McGregor
- David Randolph
- Ruth Zalduondo
- Mixer:
- Louis Doc Kane
- Foley
- Artists:
- Gregg Barbanell
- Laura Macias
- Rich Green
- Mixer:
- Scott Weber
- Editor:
- Piero Mura
- Police Adviser
- Raymond Vicari
- Stunt Co-ordinator
- Rick LeFevour
- Cast
- Kevin Bacon
- Tom Witzky
- Kathryn Erbe
- Maggie Witzky
- Illeana Douglas
- Lisa
- Liza Weil
- Debbie Kozac, the babysitter
- Kevin Dunn
- Frank McCarthy
- Conor O'Farrell
- Harry Damon
- Jenny Morrison
- Samantha
- Zachary David Cope
- Jake Witzky
- Luisa Strus
- Sheila
- Stephen Eugene Walker
- Bobby
- Mary Kay Cook
- Vanessa
- Larry Neumann Jr
- Lenny
- Richard Cotovsky
- neighbourhood man
- Steve Rifkin
- Kurt
- Chalon Williams
- Adam
- George Ivey
- security guard
- Lisa Lewis
- Debbie's mother
- Mike Bacarella
- Christian Stolte
- train station cops
- Eddie Bo Smith Jr
- Neil the cop
- Hyowon K. Yoo
- Korean woman
- Jim Andelin
- elderly man
- Karen Vaccaro
- upset woman
- Antonio Polk
- Homey
- Rosario Varela
- Latin woman
- Duane Sharp
- Polish priest
- Certificate
- 15
- Distributor
- 20th Century Fox (UK)
- 8,930 feet
- 99 minutes 14 seconds
- Dolby Digital/SDDS
- In Colour