Stir of Echoes

Although it had the misfortune of reaching theaters soon after another film about restless spirits and a child who sees dead people (a little boxoffice smash called The Sixth Sense), viewers weren't really missing all that much in this tale of a working class guy (Kevin Bacon) who tunes into ghostly visions after a party-trick hypnosis session. It would be easy to dwell on the similarities between Stir of Echoes and The Sixth Sense if it didn't feel so familiar in so many other ways. When a kindly black man discusses the psychic gifts of Bacon's son, we're in The Shining territory; when Bacon obsessively tears up his home and alienates his family, think Close Encounters of the Third Kind. The novel on which the film is based is forty years old, so you can't rightly accuse it of thievery, but that doesn't mean it won't seem lacking in originality. True, it's a semi-effective thriller in its conventional way, with director David Koepp crafting scenes that get under your skin. Ironically, however, that's another way it's like The Sixth Sense: it's a moderately clever genre diversion that wants us to think it's something more. Optional. (S. Renshaw)