Stir Of Echoes
Sometimes the most important factor when it comes to the success of a movie is merely timing. 1999 saw the release of M. Night Shyamalanâs The Sixth Sense, a mindbending supernatural thriller with arguably the most talked about must see ending since Alfred Hitchcockâs Psycho (and just about as openly referenced today as that other classic). It squarely put Shyamalanâs name onto the Hollywood Directorâs A List for life, earned a slew of Oscar Nominations including Best Picture and of course made gobs of money at the box office. Unfortunately, another little movie about ghosts also came out at right around the same time that year and while its overall story was on a much smaller scale then Sixth Sense, any chance that it might have had at the time to be successful was squandered by many people (most of whom had only seen the trailer but not the movie itself) who complained that this film was shamelessly derivative and a ripoff of what had made The Sixth Sense great (even as it would gain more of a following in the years to come). Itâs a rather unfair comparison, as while Sixth Sense IS the better movie, this film also manages to hold some worth as being a fairly scary and VERY disorienting little horror / thriller centered around ghosts, even featuring just like its rival the character of a little boy (the son of the main character) who also has the capability of âseeing dead peopleâ, but who actually does so in a very matter of fact way and at the beginning of the film already seems comfortable in communicating with such beings. The film stars Kevin Bacon (an actor who took his semi joke status as the âSix Degreesâ guy in stride and just seems to keep on working while giving consistently good performances) as Tom Witsky, a middle / lower class telephone line repairman with a beautiful wife and the aforementioned son. Bacon definitely proved as he moved into middle age that he is certainly one of cinemaâs most skilled and adept actors at playing working class regular guys, a quality that is easy to pick up on within the first few minutes of the film (a far cry from his pretty boy Footloose days). After tucking their son into bed (and finding out that his wife is pregnant again) they and his freaky deaky sister in law (Illeana Douglas, still carrying around that awkward sex appeal after getting the shit beaten out of her by DeNiro in Cape Fear) head out to a neighborhood block party in their little suburbanized area of the city of Chicago. Once the party settles down to just a few people, Douglasâ sister in law (who claims to be a witch) comes up with a weird, wild, wacky idea by offering to hypnotize somebody in order to see just what happens. Of course, it is Bacon (who is already pretty drunk) who gets chosen to be the volunteer, and away it goes (in a pretty effective sequence). Upon awakening, Bacon not only finds himself deliriously thirsty, but he almost immediately starts seeing things that he shouldnât be seeing, most notably the apparition of a teenage girl (Jennifer Morrison) who coincidentally is the same ghost that his young son has been seeing (and talking to) on a regular basis. Now those who remember the ghosts that Haley Joel Osmentâs character ran into in Sixth Sense can probably guess that thereâs something that they wanted to have their human receiver do for them so that they would find some sort of peace and here itâs no different, as this girl was subject to a gruesome rape and murder some time ago that was subsequently covered up and worse, the perpetrators are still living in the neighborhood and may even be friends of Baconâs. Bacon looks into it by asking around, where it turns out that the girl (referred to by one hard hat type as being a âreâŚtardâ seemingly because he just enjoys saying that word in such a derogatory manner) was believed to have run away from home with a carload of black guys and that nobody in the neighborhood (except the girlâs family) have ever given her a second thought since. The majority of the rest of the movie thus consists of Bacon (who still canât make heads or tails out of anything he sees) trying to piece the mystery together with the help of his son (whom it is implied inherited the gift from his father) even as it is possible that the son knows a lot more than he is letting on (though if he told his dad everything, the movie would probably be over pretty quickly). Much of this can risk being rather mundane, but fortunately Bacon is up to the challenge of holding everything together here based on the skill of his acting, showing his character basically losing his mind as he becomes more and more obsessed with getting to the bottom of things even as he risks losing his job and alienating his wife (Kathryn Erbe). As said, the twists that the ending holds in store doesnât quite match up to that of The Sixth Sense (and indeed one of the ghostly subplots in that film literally does resembles the main storyline here) and the big explanation scene that shows what actually happened to the girl prior to her death is probably not something that the family of Natalee Holloway would ever want to view as entertainment (nor any other family who has ever had a daughter go missing) but what makes the journey entertaining is in watching the depths of madness that Bacon sinks to in a story where thereâs not all that much action going on save for the conflict between him and his wife where she points out that she has never seen her husband acting that way and then a quick fix solution attempt that sees him pay a return visit to his wacky sister in law only results in things getting even worse. Now while these type of movies (as well as the TV show The Ghost Whisperer) basically built their whole plotlines on the âghost needs to have something done for them so that they can have peaceâ premise, whether or not that is a real, legitimate factor in supposed real life hauntings is something that mostly hasnât been publicly determined yet. The story does seem to get its mileage out of having the dead girl act all menacing and spooky and even occasionally cause mysterious accidents to happen (which makes her possibly appear to be a threat) when one wonders why she doesnât just communicate her grievances out loud to Bacon (unlike the son who practically sits there and appears to have everyday conversations with her) which would certainly save Bacon a lot of grief mentally as he spends much of his screen time freaking out trying to figure out what it all means. The movie does stumble into one bit of interesting territory when his wife and son meet up with a black Chicago cop (Eddie Bo Smith Jr.) whom it turns out also possesses the âgiftâ and even knows the name of the son while the boy knows his without them telling each other. Now before we get shades of Scatman Crothers in The Shining, the cop tells the mother that there are plenty of others like them who even have their own support group (shown to be a bunch of rather belligerent assholes) and after recommending that she have her husband go to their meeting place, she instead shows up alone where she is not only denied entry, but also given some very basic advice by her new friend about how to handle her husbandâs condition. As said, the details of the mystery become easier and easier to unravel as the movie goes on and just like with The Sixth Sense, a second viewing (where we pretty much know whatâs going on and how itâs all going to turn out) does take some of the impact away from the story at hand, but albeit without Shylamalanâs deliberate skill at placing the clues throughout his film which one can still enjoy picking out. Nonetheless, it is the vastly underrated strength of Baconâs acting that is the main attraction here, with him playing a typical, beer drinking, sports watching asshole whom, upon becoming imbued with this weird, crazy gift that allows him to know things which he never knew before, realizes that getting to the bottom of why this teenage girlâs ghost keeps bothering him is really the most important thing that he has ever done in his boring, average life, taking him to the edge of sanity and beyond and succeeding in salvaging a story (based on a book by the legendary Richard Matheson) that was really pretty thin around the edges to begin withâŚ
8/10