Hey folks, here's Mongo's review of STIR OF ECHOES, which he feels is a film that starts off very promising then falls into a trap of lame Mystery Of The Week story telling. He liked the initial scares, but dislikes the payoff. Well folks, I completely disagree, and if you read My Review, you'll see my feelings on the project. I enjoyed the mystery and very much prefer this film to ANGEL HEART and JACOB'S LADDER, the two films he claims are better. The following review is filled with spoilers, and for a film like this I highly recommend holding off reading spoiler reviews till after you see the film... even if you decide that is on video.... But, do as you will... Here's Mongo...
Yo King Geek,
5:01 p.m. Wednesday, July 7
As management drug their feet from cubicle to cubicle, unlocking all of the ankle chains on the temp workers for the day an intruder allert sounded - someone bypassed the security of their internet systems getting a non-work related email in from the outside!
As management scurried about attempting to track the message, I logged onto Pine (not their traceable work MicroMailService) and checked to see if it was directed at me. Indeed! Lil' Devil had scored 4 passes to a sneak! Very cool - a flick I was looking forward to: A STIR OF ECHOES. Meet 'round 6 and we're off.
Fireing off a response to Lil' Devil, I used the head of an American Panascope Ball Point Pen(tm), hit the quick release on the ankle chain and I was down the 20 flights of stairs - Mr. Watori saw me but I know about the bottle he keeps in his desk and his penchant for rectal probes. Yeesh - him and good 'ol Indy. Dont ask - suffice it to say I've wired the office. The crew met up, got in the right mood *ahem* and we were off. Showing up just as the coordinators of the sneak were opening the doors. If they were giving away any cool posters or anything I missed it, but we got righteous seats and settled in for the flick.
SPOILER FILLED REVIEW
Harry I gotta say, I was excited for a couple of reasons, 1. I heard and read it was supposed to be scary, and 2. it was from Artesian - read Pi and Blair Witch. Now if anyone expects to go into this to get the freakin wits scared out of them, they are going to be disappointed.
This flick starts out as a horror flick and ends up as a standard murder mystery that wouldn't have made it on Homicide.
To quote the coordinators as they were walking out the door "This sure aint Blair Witch" Yeah, no kidding honey.
Echoes starts out very well, giving us Kevin Bacon as a blue collar 'wire-cutter' who wants more out of life than the ordinary, which he has. Living in a nice tight neighborhood of upper middle class city dwellers, life is good in the old brownstone tenament. Bacon's character has a kid that talks to imaginary friends but that's okay, the kids parents seem to love him.
One night Bacon is hyp-mo-tised and his doors of perception are thrown wide open. Bacon can now see the ghosts that are his kids imaginary friends. At this point the frights are well placed and the hypnosis scene is done very well. The family works to deal with Bacon's overwhelming thirst for Ocean Spray(tm) orange juice, MGD(tm) beer and his ability to see the dead. His kid tells him it's okay and not to worry. Thanks kid, hope you can pay the rent cause Bacon, now a shut in, has used up his sick leave - which means the bread aint coming in and the bills still gots to be paid.
This is where a mystic comes in, he sees that Bacon's kid's has The Shining, no wait, wrong movie but you get the idea. The character seems interesting, but the door is shut on him leaving him as a simple plot filler used to edu'macate the slower filmgoers. So what we are stuck with is Bacon trying to find the body of the poltergeist (guess where it is? go on, one guess), then we get to relive a dead 'reatards' rape murder sequence and of course the murderers come back to the scene of the crime to off Bacon The Mystic.
The ghost stuff is cool and some of it is even scary, but the murder mystery is ham-handed and just down right out of place. It sinks what could have been a psychological mind-fuck ala JACOB'S LADDER or ANGEL HEART, but STIR OF ECHOES hangs a hard right into Schlock Mystery Land and gives us a bad who-done-it in the end.
What I mean by a bad mystery is that it is just poorly executed and lacks any sort of suspence. One character seems to have commited suicide, then comes rushing in - gun blazing - at the most opportune time FOR THE MOVIE. This guy must own all those cats that show up in the teen slasher flicks, you know, the ones that scream "Mreeeowww" and flash across the screen AT THE MOST OPPORTUNE MOMENT. Also, the only reason the killers can be linked to the murderer is an obvious chunk of hair in the victims hand which, while walling her up behind TWO layers of brick and stone, they neglect to notice even though she's holding it like a bouquet of flowers. It's too bad, really. I had very high hopes for it and was really let down.
The movie was based on a novel and I get the feeling that the bones of the novel were used but the shape and flesh of the novel (if there was any, I havent read it) were stripped bare for whatever reason. Uneven - yes. Scary - not very. Good mystery - no.
Sorry to bring the bad news, King Geek, btw, you should swing into the forums sometime, the gang misses ya.
Later,
mongo
