Stir of Echoes

Infobox Film | name = Stir of Echoes


caption = Original 1999 theatrical poster
director = David Koepp
producer = Judy Hofflund
Gavin Polone
writer = Richard Matheson (novel)
David Koepp (screenplay)
starring = Kevin Bacon
Kathryn Erbe
Zachary David Cope
Illeana Douglas
Jennifer Morrison
music = James Newton Howard
cinematography = Fred Murphy
editing = Jill Savitt
distributor = Artisan Entertainment (USA)
20th Century Fox (non-USA)
released = September 10, 1999 (USA)
runtime = 99 minutes
language = English
budget = $13,000,000
amg_id = 1:180773
imdb_id = 0164181
followed_by = ""

"Stir of Echoes" is a supernatural thriller released in the United States in 1999, starring Kevin Bacon and directed by David Koepp. The film is loosely based on the novel of the same name by Richard Matheson.

Plot Summary

Tom Witzky (Kevin Bacon) is a fairly typical working-class guy living in Chicago with his pregnant wife Maggie (Kathryn Erbe) and son Jake (Zachary David Cope).

One night at a party, Tom gets into a lively discussion with Maggie's sister Lisa (Illeana Douglas), who believes in psychic communication and the power of hypnosis. He challenges Lisa to hypnotize him, and after putting him under, Lisa plants a post-hypnotic suggestion in Tom urging him to "be more open-minded."

The results aren't quite what anyone expected; that night, Tom sees the spirit of a pale young woman (Jennifer Morrison), and panics. Tom eventually learns that he is a "receiver," a person capable of communicating with the spirit world. Jake, like his father, is also a receiver, but while Jake is calm and coherent in his conversations with Samantha, Tom is confused and agitated, lacking the ability to control his power.

While Tom and his wife are headed to a football game one night, Jake is caught talking to "Samantha" by the baby sitter, who seems unusually upset at the prospect. She then grabs Jake from the bed and runs off with him. Still waiting in line to get in the building, Tom is unnerved and suddenly rushes home only to find Jake gone. He runs out of the house and experiences flashes of red that lead him and his wife to a train station where the babysitter is talking to a cashier. After a confrontation at the train station, we discover that the babysitter is Samantha's sister, and the cashier at the train station is her mother.

Samantha Kozac , it turns out, was mentally handicapped; although a physically fully-developed teenager, she had the mental capacity of a child perhaps eight years old, along with a child's tendency to trust strangers. She went missing months earlier and her family has been looking for her.

Tom then becomes obsessed with trying to figure out why he is seeing Samantha and what she wants from him. Even going so far as to try and recreate their first meeting. He asks about the girl who used to live in the area, hoping someone could give him a clue. This attracted the attention of two boys, Kurt and Adam, and their fathers who are friends of Tom's.

Later that day Tom has a psychic vision of Adam's father, Frank, telling him "they" are going to kill him and Maggie. In the vision he walks to Frank's house and sees Adam with a gun to his chest. Tom wakes up and finds the same note Maggie left in his vision. He doesn't see Frank but decides to walk the couple blocks to his house anyway. Upon ariving he hears a gunshot and finds Adam on the floor bleeding from a gunshot wound to his chest. He calls for help and ends up saving the boy's life.

Meanwhile Tom's wife Maggie runs into a mysterious man in a graveyard while taking a walk with Jake. He asks her to tell her husband to come meet with him and says goodbye to Jake who never told him his name. Jake then says goodbye to Neil who also never said his name. Instead of asking Tom to go, Maggie takes it upon herself to go ask Neil what is going on with her husband. After some initial reluctance he tells her that sometimes trauma causes latent abilities to come forth and that Tom is working like a broken flashlight. Getting glimpses of things but not enough to know what they are. He then says the spirit that contacted him asked for something and will get more upset when it doesn't get done. When Maggie asks about Jake and his abilities Neil smiles and says "Much better flashlight."

As time goes on Tom and his family get more and more plagued by the spirit and Tom becomes more and more unhinged eventually having to ask Lisa, Maggie's sister, to undo what she did. She is unable to when the spirit interferes and instead of being hypnotized to sleep he is told by the spirit to DIG.

Maggie next finds Tom in their back yard digging it up. She asks him what he is doing and all he repeats is... "I'm supposed to dig."Maggie leaves to go to a relative's house as Tom's behavior becomes out of control. He begins to tear apart the house with powertools, eventually getting a jackhammer from an appliance store. While using the sledgehammer he accidentally swings back too far and knocks down a shoddy bricked up wall in the basement finally finding the wrapped up and decomposed body of Samantha. As he touches her he is thrown into a vision of how she was killed eventually learning that Adam and Kurt, two neighborhood boys, lured Samantha into the house, then killed her inadvertently during a struggle while they tried to rape her.

Maggie is shown at her relative's house with Jake telling him she is going to go home and check on his father. When asked if he wanted to go Jake declined saying he was scared of the feathers.

In the next scene Tom walks out of the basement in a daze and gets a knock on the door. Both Kurt and his father Harry (Tom's landlord and friend) are standing there wondering why the house is torn apart. Tom says he is looking for a leaky water main. Harry, who already knows Tom has found the body he and his son put in the basement while remodeling rushes in and grabs Tom while Kurt prepares to shoot him. A honk from out front stops them and they turn off the lights as Maggie comes walking in. Maggie gets grabbed and taken hostage and is about to be shot when Frank comes in and shoots both Kurt and Harry to save the couple. As Harry is shot his own gun goes off in the air shooting straight up into Jake's bedroom and goes right through Jake's pillow leaving feathers floating down as per Jake's ominous warning. Frank then walks out and sits on the front steps saying they were going to kill him and Maggie, mirroring one of Tom's earlier visions. Tom then notices the now healthy and alive looking spirit of Samantha in the road. She puts on her glasses and coat, smiles, then walks down the road and disappears.

At the end of the movie, we see the family packing up a U-Haul and moving out of the house. As they drive away, Tom and Maggie look happy. In the final shot, however, we see Jake looking out of the window as a hubbub of ghostly voices gets louder and louder. Jake tries to cover his ears to drown them out.

Cast

*Kevin Bacon .... Tom Witzky
*Kathryn Erbe .... Maggie Witzky
*Zachary David Cope .... Jake Witzky
*Jennifer Morrison .... Samantha Kozac
*Illeana Douglas .... Lisa
*Kevin Dunn .... Frank McCarthy
*Conor O'Farrell .... Harry Damon
*Liza Weil .... Debbie Kozac, the Babysitter
*Lusia Strus .... Sheila McCarthy

External links

* [http://thebeyond.info/hollywood/stirofechoes.htm The Beyond: Stir Of Echoes] -Webpage based on the film, and using hypnosis as a tool in dealing with the paranormal.
*Imdb title|0164181