Oct 111999
 
two reels

Blue collar everyman Tom Witzky (Kevin Bacon) is hypnotized at a party by his sister-in-law, opening up his ability to see ghosts.  One ghost in particular, that of a missing girl who has been talking to Tom’s son for some time, has something she wants him to do.  He just doesn’t know what.

Quick Review: I feel sorry for everyone connected with Stir of Echoes.  They made a little ghost story involving marital problems and a child who sees dead people and released it at the same time as The Sixth Sense; timing is everything.  While not up to the level of its competition, Stir of Echoes is an atmospheric horror story with a reasonably engaging plot.  Bacon does a nice job as a man slowly losing his mind.  But the whole thing is too predictable (we’re in standard ghost story territory here) and the only question is how will Tom’s spiritually aware son play into the plot.  Answer: he won’t.  It turns out the kid and his ghostly sight could be removed from the picture without altering a thing.  Swiping from other films doesn’t help, with a whole digging section feeling like a rewrite of the famed Close Encounters of the Third Kind scene.  The middle of the picture drags, with the characters ignoring obvious moves (why doesn’t Tom ask his kid to clarify what the ghost wants?).  But the biggest problem comes from the wife, who argues over and over with Tom after she has plenty of evidence that it’s not all in his head.  The viewer knows that there’s ghostly activity, so the wife’s diatribes get old fast.  At half the length, this might have been a first rate, if uninspired, re-telling of the standard ghost story.  As is, it’s OK to catch on the late show.

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