(NOTE: The following review will contain minor spoilers necessary solely for the discussion of plot and/or characters. If you’re the type of reader who prefers a review entirely spoiler-free, then I’d encourage you to skip down to the last few paragraphs for the final assessment. If, however, you’re accepting of a few modest hints at ‘things to come,’ then read on …)
From the film’s IMDB.com page citation:
“A man is hypnotized at a party by his sister-in law. He soon has visions and dreams of a ghost of a girl. Trying to avoid this, nearly pushes him to brink of insanity as the ghost wants something from him - to find out how she died. The only way he can get his life back is finding out the truth behind her death. The more he digs, the more he lets her in, the shocking truth behind her death puts his whole family in danger.”
A quick search of Google.com indicates that Stir Of Echoes (1999) enjoyed some good (but not great) box office returns, essentially surviving on the strength of earning back domestically twice its reported budget (i.e. $25M receipts versus a $12M studio cost).
I wanted to look those numbers up because while I distinctly remember seeing the film during its original theatrical run I honestly didn’t much remember the story. I have vague recollections of comparing it to The Dead Zone (1983) and The Sixth Sense (1999), though I also recall thinking that the story of a man being psychically overwhelmed by a dead body hidden beneath the floorboards of his rental home seemed a bit too familiar to the great Edgar Allan Poe short story, “The Tell-Tale Heart.” Having not read 1958’s A Stir Of Echoes – the Richard Matheson novel upon which all of this was based – I can’t state whether or not any of the comparisons are warranted when it comes to the source material, but there’s no escaping the fact that the theatrical incarnation benefits a good deal from association to some of what’s come before.
However, I can’t help but wonder if Stir’s immediate prospects in 1999 were hampered by being released in the wrong place at the wrong time. That year, I do recall an overwhelming number of flicks going through theaters that dealt with similar subject matter. The aforementioned The Sixth Sense from director M. Night Shyamalan lead the pack with his picture ending up the second highest theatrical blockbuster that year (a reasonably distant second behind George Lucas’ Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace); and the found-footage-film everyone loves to hate on – The Blair Witch Project – rounded out the top ten big earners for the year. With other entries like The Haunting, Stigmata, House On Haunted Hill, and Sleepy Hollow hitting screen roughly around the same timeframe, it’s rather easy to conclude that perhaps viewers felt a bit overwhelmed with things that go bump in the night and were a bit more discriminating in their choices as that might explain why Stir didn’t made as much of a stir as it perhaps should have.
Tom Witzky (played by Kevin Bacon) is a blue-collar phone lineman who finds himself kinda/sorta on the cusp of a way-too-early mid-life crisis: frustrated that his life hasn’t quite worked out the way he and wife Maggie (Kathryn Erbe) believed it would, he senses the walls are closing in around him when his little lady announces that she’s pregnant with what would be their second child. Their first – Jake (Zachary David Cope) – is of that impressionable age wherein he’s starting speaking with imaginary friends; and Tom decides he needs to give up on his dream of becoming a musician.
At a get-together with family and friends, he agrees to being hypnotized by his somewhat wacky but kind-hearted sister-in-law Lisa (Illeana Douglas). As he descends into his deep sleep, he experiences some quick flashes of seemingly random and unrelated images, none of which make much sense to him although they leave him with a sense of despair. Once he awakens to the faces of his cohorts smiling all around him, he figures they were treated to something interesting though he can’t quite begin to imagine what it was. A bit distressed from it all, he and Maggie head home for the night and crawl into bed.
In the wee small hours of the morning, Tom begins to see a bit more of those visions that plagued him earlier, enough so that he can establish the loose context that he believes he had watched someone being grievously injured. But once he’s fully awakened, he slowly begins to discover that he’s somehow been gifted with a form of second sight – a soft precognition, of sorts – and he starts predicting a few harmful events before they occur. Before long, these voices from beyond begin instructing him to go further into some self-destructive behaviors, ones that defy any conventional explanation. If he can’t gain control of his senses once more, then he’ll risk losing those he loves dearest while trying to right some wrong that’s hanging over our plane from the other side of existence.
From the film’s IMDB.com page citation:
“A man is hypnotized at a party by his sister-in law. He soon has visions and dreams of a ghost of a girl. Trying to avoid this, nearly pushes him to brink of insanity as the ghost wants something from him - to find out how she died. The only way he can get his life back is finding out the truth behind her death. The more he digs, the more he lets her in, the shocking truth behind her death puts his whole family in danger.”
A quick search of Google.com indicates that Stir Of Echoes (1999) enjoyed some good (but not great) box office returns, essentially surviving on the strength of earning back domestically twice its reported budget (i.e. $25M receipts versus a $12M studio cost).
I wanted to look those numbers up because while I distinctly remember seeing the film during its original theatrical run I honestly didn’t much remember the story. I have vague recollections of comparing it to The Dead Zone (1983) and The Sixth Sense (1999), though I also recall thinking that the story of a man being psychically overwhelmed by a dead body hidden beneath the floorboards of his rental home seemed a bit too familiar to the great Edgar Allan Poe short story, “The Tell-Tale Heart.” Having not read 1958’s A Stir Of Echoes – the Richard Matheson novel upon which all of this was based – I can’t state whether or not any of the comparisons are warranted when it comes to the source material, but there’s no escaping the fact that the theatrical incarnation benefits a good deal from association to some of what’s come before.
However, I can’t help but wonder if Stir’s immediate prospects in 1999 were hampered by being released in the wrong place at the wrong time. That year, I do recall an overwhelming number of flicks going through theaters that dealt with similar subject matter. The aforementioned The Sixth Sense from director M. Night Shyamalan lead the pack with his picture ending up the second highest theatrical blockbuster that year (a reasonably distant second behind George Lucas’ Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace); and the found-footage-film everyone loves to hate on – The Blair Witch Project – rounded out the top ten big earners for the year. With other entries like The Haunting, Stigmata, House On Haunted Hill, and Sleepy Hollow hitting screen roughly around the same timeframe, it’s rather easy to conclude that perhaps viewers felt a bit overwhelmed with things that go bump in the night and were a bit more discriminating in their choices as that might explain why Stir didn’t made as much of a stir as it perhaps should have.
Tom Witzky (played by Kevin Bacon) is a blue-collar phone lineman who finds himself kinda/sorta on the cusp of a way-too-early mid-life crisis: frustrated that his life hasn’t quite worked out the way he and wife Maggie (Kathryn Erbe) believed it would, he senses the walls are closing in around him when his little lady announces that she’s pregnant with what would be their second child. Their first – Jake (Zachary David Cope) – is of that impressionable age wherein he’s starting speaking with imaginary friends; and Tom decides he needs to give up on his dream of becoming a musician.
At a get-together with family and friends, he agrees to being hypnotized by his somewhat wacky but kind-hearted sister-in-law Lisa (Illeana Douglas). As he descends into his deep sleep, he experiences some quick flashes of seemingly random and unrelated images, none of which make much sense to him although they leave him with a sense of despair. Once he awakens to the faces of his cohorts smiling all around him, he figures they were treated to something interesting though he can’t quite begin to imagine what it was. A bit distressed from it all, he and Maggie head home for the night and crawl into bed.
In the wee small hours of the morning, Tom begins to see a bit more of those visions that plagued him earlier, enough so that he can establish the loose context that he believes he had watched someone being grievously injured. But once he’s fully awakened, he slowly begins to discover that he’s somehow been gifted with a form of second sight – a soft precognition, of sorts – and he starts predicting a few harmful events before they occur. Before long, these voices from beyond begin instructing him to go further into some self-destructive behaviors, ones that defy any conventional explanation. If he can’t gain control of his senses once more, then he’ll risk losing those he loves dearest while trying to right some wrong that’s hanging over our plane from the other side of existence.
While Stir gets very good mileage out of Tom’s newly discovered abilities (there’s a strong suggestion that the gift was always there only awaiting a spiritual awakening), there’s really a great deal of convenient circumstances that tie several of these seemingly unrelated events together.
The Witzky’s just happen to be renting a property in which some dark event occurred; and both father and son just happen to be receptors for messages from the Afterlife. Furthermore, the aforementioned dark event just happens to involve other members of the neighborhood; and those potentially nefarious characters just happen to be keeping an eye on developments within the Witzky household at key scripted moments. While I’m no expert on supernatural issues, I’ve seen enough HBO, Cinemax, and Netflix to know that haunted houses have many ways in which to manifest themselves; and usually practical intervention can open doors to easier resolutions than what takes place here. Suffice it to say, Tom makes a mess of his stately mansion in the process; and he practically stumbles into a dead body being planted where no one expected it. Couldn’t the ghost/s have been a bit more specific if wanting to be found? What if he had stumbled left instead of right? This is what I mean about convenient circumstances: far too many of them are required for this one to unfold the way this one does.
Additionally, I think the script from writer/director David Koepp never quite gets a solid handle on Tom as a character. He’s easy to understand in the opening set-up, but before you know it he descended into full-blown cray-cray territory without any real development. There’s something to be said for a bit of nuance, and Bacon – as a talent – has had the chops for years to do some great work on camera. Getting dialed up to eleven should’ve been a more pronounced progression – we only see him at work in a single scene, and then the next we hear about it he’s basically abandoned his job – and the interactions between the husband and the wife could’ve been more special than what gets delivered here. Once he’s taking shovels to every square inch of the back yard, Maggie should’ve been vastly more alarmed than she comes off … or maybe I’m just thinking how my wife would’ve treated me had she returned home to find me knee deep in such a descent.
Still, there’s a refreshing likability to just about everything else in Stir.
As a ghost story, it’s easy to follow, never quite relying on any significant measure of visual trickery to sell its scares, which are more cerebral in nature. It chocked full of familiar faces in the talent department, so much so that there’s no trouble whatsoever accepting it as some authentic New York neighborhood where everyone knows everyone else’s business despite the presence of all-consuming skyscrapers in the near distance. Bacon’s been a bit of a handyman before – 1990’s Tremors immediately comes to mind, but this is a far stretch from that lovable nitwit Valentine McKee – so seeing him in this weary Brooklyn body feels natural enough. Though it did seem a bit odd that – being from the neighborhood – he and Maggie seemed somewhat unaware of the disappearance of Samantha Kozac (Jennifer Morrison) that fuels the spectral half of this story, that’s a minor hiccup in an otherwise proficient Horror feature. It’s a film that I think deserves a bigger audience than it originally got, and maybe this will be rectified with Lionsgate’s 25th anniversary release.
Stir Of Echoes (1999) was produced by Artisan Entertainment. DVD distribution (for this particular release) has been coordinated by the fine folks at Lionsgate Entertainment. As for the technical specifications? While I’m no trained video expert, I found the provided sights-and-sounds to be exceptional throughout: there’s one minor quibble I have with a certain ghostly image being a bit too underwhelming, but that’s about all she wrote. If you’re looking for special features? In order to be precise, I’m doing the ol’ copy-and-paste from Lionsgate Home Entertainment’s press release previously published on Blu-ray.com:
Strongly Recommended.
While I may not have appreciated Stir Of Echoes (1999) as much as the next Horror fan, I still have a solid appreciation for the solid craftsmanship going into any respectable thriller/chiller. Director Koepp adapts the original Richard Matheson story for the screen with some obvious affection for it; and he manages to have his talented players hit all of their marks in just the right doses. If anything, I’ll always nitpick a performance that doesn’t feel fully realized, and that’s the case here: Bacon’s descent into madness was far too quickly staged and far too easily hyped, ignoring the nuance I expected from a man slowly and calculatedly losing his mind over the spectral visions he’s been delivered. There are other ways with which to deal with unresolved issues transgressing from the Afterlife into our realm, and why were absolutely none of them considered here? That alone seems a bit of a miss.
In the interests of fairness, I’m pleased to disclose that the fine folks at Lionsgate provided me with a complimentary 4K UltraHD Blu-ray of Stir Of Echoes (1999) by request for the expressed purpose of completing this review. Their contribution to me in no way, shape, or form influenced my opinion of it.
-- EZ
The Witzky’s just happen to be renting a property in which some dark event occurred; and both father and son just happen to be receptors for messages from the Afterlife. Furthermore, the aforementioned dark event just happens to involve other members of the neighborhood; and those potentially nefarious characters just happen to be keeping an eye on developments within the Witzky household at key scripted moments. While I’m no expert on supernatural issues, I’ve seen enough HBO, Cinemax, and Netflix to know that haunted houses have many ways in which to manifest themselves; and usually practical intervention can open doors to easier resolutions than what takes place here. Suffice it to say, Tom makes a mess of his stately mansion in the process; and he practically stumbles into a dead body being planted where no one expected it. Couldn’t the ghost/s have been a bit more specific if wanting to be found? What if he had stumbled left instead of right? This is what I mean about convenient circumstances: far too many of them are required for this one to unfold the way this one does.
Additionally, I think the script from writer/director David Koepp never quite gets a solid handle on Tom as a character. He’s easy to understand in the opening set-up, but before you know it he descended into full-blown cray-cray territory without any real development. There’s something to be said for a bit of nuance, and Bacon – as a talent – has had the chops for years to do some great work on camera. Getting dialed up to eleven should’ve been a more pronounced progression – we only see him at work in a single scene, and then the next we hear about it he’s basically abandoned his job – and the interactions between the husband and the wife could’ve been more special than what gets delivered here. Once he’s taking shovels to every square inch of the back yard, Maggie should’ve been vastly more alarmed than she comes off … or maybe I’m just thinking how my wife would’ve treated me had she returned home to find me knee deep in such a descent.
Still, there’s a refreshing likability to just about everything else in Stir.
As a ghost story, it’s easy to follow, never quite relying on any significant measure of visual trickery to sell its scares, which are more cerebral in nature. It chocked full of familiar faces in the talent department, so much so that there’s no trouble whatsoever accepting it as some authentic New York neighborhood where everyone knows everyone else’s business despite the presence of all-consuming skyscrapers in the near distance. Bacon’s been a bit of a handyman before – 1990’s Tremors immediately comes to mind, but this is a far stretch from that lovable nitwit Valentine McKee – so seeing him in this weary Brooklyn body feels natural enough. Though it did seem a bit odd that – being from the neighborhood – he and Maggie seemed somewhat unaware of the disappearance of Samantha Kozac (Jennifer Morrison) that fuels the spectral half of this story, that’s a minor hiccup in an otherwise proficient Horror feature. It’s a film that I think deserves a bigger audience than it originally got, and maybe this will be rectified with Lionsgate’s 25th anniversary release.
Stir Of Echoes (1999) was produced by Artisan Entertainment. DVD distribution (for this particular release) has been coordinated by the fine folks at Lionsgate Entertainment. As for the technical specifications? While I’m no trained video expert, I found the provided sights-and-sounds to be exceptional throughout: there’s one minor quibble I have with a certain ghostly image being a bit too underwhelming, but that’s about all she wrote. If you’re looking for special features? In order to be precise, I’m doing the ol’ copy-and-paste from Lionsgate Home Entertainment’s press release previously published on Blu-ray.com:
- NEW 4K RESTORATION OF THE FILM
- DOLBY VISION/HDR PRESENTATION OF THE FILM
- DOLBY ATMOS AUDIO TRACK
- NEW Visions of the Past - Revisiting Stir of Echoes
- NEW Establishing Shot with Fred Murphy
- PLUS Legacy supplemental features, including:
- Audio commentary
- Featurettes
- Cast and Crew Interviews
- Promotional Materials
- AND More...
- Optional English SDH and Spanish subtitles for the main feature
Strongly Recommended.
While I may not have appreciated Stir Of Echoes (1999) as much as the next Horror fan, I still have a solid appreciation for the solid craftsmanship going into any respectable thriller/chiller. Director Koepp adapts the original Richard Matheson story for the screen with some obvious affection for it; and he manages to have his talented players hit all of their marks in just the right doses. If anything, I’ll always nitpick a performance that doesn’t feel fully realized, and that’s the case here: Bacon’s descent into madness was far too quickly staged and far too easily hyped, ignoring the nuance I expected from a man slowly and calculatedly losing his mind over the spectral visions he’s been delivered. There are other ways with which to deal with unresolved issues transgressing from the Afterlife into our realm, and why were absolutely none of them considered here? That alone seems a bit of a miss.
In the interests of fairness, I’m pleased to disclose that the fine folks at Lionsgate provided me with a complimentary 4K UltraHD Blu-ray of Stir Of Echoes (1999) by request for the expressed purpose of completing this review. Their contribution to me in no way, shape, or form influenced my opinion of it.
-- EZ
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