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Stir
of Echoes
(1999) |
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Blue collar worker with dead end life is searching for that something that will give his existence some meaning. On a boozy night with some family and friends he goads his pseudo sister-in-law into hypnotizing him as he believes this kind of mumbo jumbo cant possibly wash on his hardened cynical attitude. The experience that follows leaves him traumatized as his session ends with him having fragmented visions of some murderous violence. The visions stay with him like residue and keep flooding back from time to time as more grisly flashes of violent images and death. Kevin Bacon who does a fine job playing Tom Witzky starts losing control of reality around him and seems to be drawn deeper and deeper into his visions, trying to decipher what these flashing images are trying to convey to him. Strange things start happening to him as he develops an unquenchable thirst and begins to feel impulses and urges which seem to be directing him towards some hidden goal. He is a man driven by an unseen force to uncover something that he can't begin to comprehend. All he knows is that it is happening and that there is some real force (the visions?) that keeps driving him, urging him to literally unearth something buried deep down in the past. Tom digs and digs and digs….first his backyard and then simply digs up his entire house from within using a pneumatic drill looking for something he doesn't quite comprehend himself. It's an interesting premise though somehow in 1999 there were at least two other films using a similar theme. We had Jan De Bont's horrendous Haunting in which all those ghostly and ghastly children were searching for justice and to somehow transmit their suffering through to the world of the living. All this so that they could rest in peace having achieved a justice that eluded them in life as well as in death. In De Bont's monstrosity, the young inhabitants of Hill House were using inhabitants to inform them of their dark secrets and to how they had met their demise at the hands of a murderous lord. In The Sixth Sense, we had various angry spirits come to little Cole in order to try to achieve a justice they thought they deserved. A justice which would allow them to shed their grief and anger and rest in a state of melancholic peace for ever after. It is this theme of the dead seeking justice through those who are still alive that is at the heart of Stir of Echoes. Unfortunately the promise that the film shows is dissipated along the way as too many unanswered questions start cropping up and remain unanswered along the way. Such as why Bacon developed his thirst for orange juice among other things and also what was going on with the meeting of "receivers". Some aspects of the plot remain unexplained and somewhat unconnected to the whole and there appear to be a number of loose ends which a film like The Sixth Sense took meticulous care to avoid. The film ends up coming across like a really interesting idea remaining somewhat unfulfilled. The film manages to entertain even if it leaves one slightly frustrated upon conclusion. Bacon's performance is compelling and Koepp's direction though flawed, contains much visual style and beckons well for the future. A film with lofty aspirations nearly hits its mark. Horror movie fans may well prefer this ghostly instalment to The massively successful Sixth Sense even if aspects of it remain baffling till beyond the very end.
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