6/24/08: Stir of Echoes (1999)As we’ve noted before, it’s a good thing that we keep this site such a secret. M. Night Shyamalan might agree.
A recent post pointed out the resemblance that his film has to a short story by classic horror writer Richard Matheson—whose many accomplishments include the source novel for what became
The Omega Man, and later the properly-titled
I Am Legend.
Then we gave things more thought. We had some idea that there was another Shyamalan/Matheson connection, but it took a while to remember
Stir of Echoes.
This modest thriller came out the month after Shyamalan had his first big hit with
The Sixth Sense. Critics assumed that there couldn’t be a connection. They also had a clear preference in their stories about a little kid who sees dead people. Of course, this was before anyone had any ideas about Shyamalan, or could’ve guessed that
The Sixth Sense’s writer/director has a certain fondness for Matheson.
As it turns out,
Stir of Echoes is adapted from a Richard Matheson novel published in 1958. It’s suddenly not so surprising that the film resembles
The Sixth Sense.
It’s a little more surprising that
Stir of Echoes has some real conservative content. Matheson actually wrote plenty of good conservative stories. We could kill an entire month with entries based on film adaptations of his work. The unexpected element is that
Stir of Echoes—set in the present day of 1999—was written and directed by David Koepp. He’s the Hollywood screenwriter who raised some conservative ire by stating that his script for 2005’s
War of the Worlds was an Iraqi War parable. The invading aliens, naturally, were American troops.
Koepp does right by Matheson here. Kevin Bacon stars as Tom Witzky, who’s a decent blue-collar worker trying to earn an honest (if vaguely dissatisfied) living in Chicago. He’s got a job with the phone company, and rents a house from another regular guy who’s trying to turn around an old neighborhood. In what’s one of the most perfect metaphors ever, Tom then has his life ruined when his New Age sister-in-law inspires him to open his mind.
The daffy Lisa—played in nicely oblivious style by Illeana Douglas—puts Tom under a hypnotic spell at a party. Tom doesn’t believe in hypnosis, but he’s a good sport and tries to play along. Lisa turns out to have her own agenda while putting Tom in a trance. As she later explains to him, she added a post-hypnotic suggestion: “After you wake up, your mind will be completely open.”
As a result, Tom is suddenly aware of a ghost haunting his house. This gives him something in common with his 6-year-old son. That’s nice. It’s also nice that Tom can now get to work trying to figure out an unsolved murder. You know what’s not so nice? His ditzy sister-in-law gets to go on with her life, without realizing how she’s endangered her sister and nephew.
That’s the whole story of 20th century enlightenment, nicely summed up in 1999. It’s left to Tom to literally do all the dirty work—and, as it turns out, he probably would’ve figured out the whole thing without the interference of the happy hippie in his life. The ghost in his house isn’t particularly bright, and the working man has to use all his natural tenacity to figure out any clues—all while dealing with plenty of cranial interference. As he eventually asks Lisa, “Did you leave anything else inside while you were kicking your clumsy-ass feet inside my brain?”
We won’t give away the ending, but Koepp resists what could’ve been an easy caricature of right-wing villains. He also wrote the screenplays for
Toy Soldiers and two other films we might get around to someday, so maybe he’s not such a bad guy. Koepp’s certainly decent enough to put the Matheson name on a Matheson story.
Make it your own: The
Stir of Echoes DVD can be found for
really cheap. There’s a director’s commentary, but we lost interest after Koepp said that Steven Spielberg’s
Duel—adapted from a Matheson story—starred Dennis Hopper.
There was a recent direct-to-video sequel called
Stir of Echoes: The Homecoming. It’s about an American soldier who kills a bunch of innocent people in Iraq, and his son who commits a hate crime against a Middle Eastern youth back in the States. You know, the usual.
