Livestonth I am only giving this movie a 1 for the great cast, though I can't imagine what any of them were thinking. This movie was horrible

Hadrina The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

Teddie Blake The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

Leoni Haney Yes, absolutely, there is fun to be had, as well as many, many things to go boom, all amid an atmospheric urban jungle.

jb0579 When I review a movie I don't go into plot; you can read that anywhere. I'm a screenwriter myself so I tend to write about idiosyncratic things that you'd not look for, but your mind sees. The film has a fresh story, is beautifully lit, artistically shot, and is worth the watch. In the trivia section, one of the contributors has it exactly correct: what they would do is slow the film speed down as much as possible and have the actress walk as normally as she can. Then they speed the film up to regular speed and all the little mannerisms come out in an eerie sort of ghostly ethereal way. It's not used much - Hitchcock would have loved this technique. Lots of fortuitous things happen, like when Bacon kicks a bucket through a window which was accidental but Bacon had the presence of mind to stay in character thus the shot made the movie. The direction was better than average the acting better than average. Ileana Douglas is always good Bacon is usually good or Erbe is underrated and too seldom cast so you had the makings already of a film that you knew had potential. Add the weird twist and Jennifer Morrison, AKA Doctor Cameron from the show "House", and you have a movie that is great to watch on a rainy Sunday afternoon. I recommend it.

bayardhiler "Stir of Echoes" is more than just your average ghost story; it's a thriller that weaves together mystery, intrigue, murder, and love of family into a very memorable film. Adapted from the novel by the late, great Richard Matheson, the story centers around everyday man Tom Witzky (Kevin Bacon), his wife Maggie (Kathryn Erbe) and their young son, Jake (Zachary David Cope). They seem to have the perfect life in their Chicago suburban home until one night at a neighborhood block party Tom, ever the supernatural/otherworldly skeptic, agrees to be hypnotized by his mystic-minded sister-in-law. He doesn't remember much about what happens during the hypnosis, but what follows next is anything but child's play as strange images involving a ghostly, teenage girl and past events of the house they live in start appearing in his mind. It turns out Tom has become a receiver, someone whose mind is open to visions of the future and communication with the dead, and that's not all. Tom's son, Jake, already has this sixth sense, if you will, and he too has visions of the girl he calls Samantha. It doesn't take long for Tom to discover that Samantha was a real person who disappeared from the neighborhood but no one in the community knows why or seems to care. From there, it's a race for the truth as Tom tries to uncover what really happened to the young girl who haunts his mind before it tears him apart.I had heard of "Stir of Echoes" through this site long before I saw it. It was not until recently I finally got my chance to see it and needless to say, I was not disappointed. The story is beautifully crafted right from the beginning, where we first meet Jake taking a bath and seemly talking to his father in the next room. It's only after his father leaves the room and he's drying off that we find out (I won't reveal exactly how we know as to not spoil it) he's talking to someone else. The scene gives me chills just thinking of it and there are plenty more to come. Writer and director David Koepp should be congratulated for being to combine scenes that scare and disturb with a good, strong story. As for as characters, each of the actors give solid performances, be it Kevin Bacon as skeptic turned (almost dangerously) obsessed believer, Kathryn Erbe as Tom's devoted wife, Illeana Douglas as the sister-in-law, Kevin Dunn as Tom's friend and neighbor Frank, or Zachary David Cope as young Jake Witzky. Mr. Cope's performance has to be one of the most brilliant I've ever seen from a child actor or in general due to his ability to be sweet but also a bit other worldly due to his ability to see things we can't. Plus there's a whole lot of amazing supporting actors and actresses, such as Jennifer Morrison as young Samantha, that should be congratulated for their work. I'm not sure what Mr. Matheson thought of this film but as for me, I can't praise it enough. "Stir of Echoes" is a film that works, not only for the reasons above but in addition, it will make you wonder how well do you really know your neighborhood or the house you live in? And on that note, don't let this gem of a film pass you by. Watch and be prepared for some unsettling truths.

poe426 A STIR OF ECHOES happens to be one of the better Big Screen adaptations of a Richard Matheson story, though it's FAR from being all that it should've been- THAT we'll attribute to the inability of most modern-day filmmakers to tell a coherent tale without reliance on some sort of special effects (which just tend to get in the way, anyway). Bacon does a good job in the lead, though it would indeed have been interesting to see Matheson's tale told as originally written. The overall feel of STIR OF ECHOES is not unlike that of some of the really creepy Japanese chillers that were all the rage back in the day. (Matheson was always ahead of the curve, if you ask me: his short story FROM SHADOWED PLACES, for instance, published a decade before THE EXORCIST, told the terrifying tale of a young man possessed by an evil spirit in a New York apartment. His contortions are described exactly like those we see the girl manifest in THE EXORCIST. A juju woman is called in to combat the evil, though she nearly died fighting it a decade earlier in Africa. She allows the evil spirit to enter into HER body so she can destroy it. Sound familiar? William Peter Blatty once said that he'd intended to make the Karras character a black man- the juju woman in FROM SHADOWED PLACES is black- but he changed his mind because he "didn't want to write Sydney Poitier." Coincidence? No doubt...)

corsonb I voted a 4 for this film and the only reason it arrived there was the cast and the quality of their work. They were all marvelous with a low- quality and repulsive script. The scenarist decided that the middle class of Chicago are dumb and kept them that way for the entire film. The original story was more in the suburbs of the films of Stephen Spielberg mixed with "Desperate Housewives".Don't get me wrong; the casting was great and so were ALL of the actors' work, but the script was a perversion of the work of a great film, television, short story, and novel writer. (The author of the original book was, among other things, one of the major authors of many classic episodes of the original "Twilight Zone".)The story was ruined by that change, but all of the "grunts" (actors, crew, director of photography, etc.) did great work. ALL of these actors are worth watching in this film... even if the "powers that be" ruined what could have been a good, new variation on "6th Sense".I realize that the producers need to make money with this story. So, they lowered the class and the IQ's of all of the characters so that a "middle American" audience would "identify with it". That's a sad fact for the film industry (especially in our epoch), but it's common for at least 30 years. That's why comic books (the same story several times over!) and even boardgames and toys are being transformed into "blockbusters". Writers in Hollywood have had almost no original ideas in the last 30 years, but since producers have no idea what "writing" or "originality" are, they produce and make money with middle America with stories that are the lowest common denominators in the field. Welcome to the industry of "art".I have a large DVD collection (more than 500 titles), but this one won't be added. ... However, I will write to the actors' agents so that I can pass the message that they did great work, nevertheless. (I'm a voice actor and I know we as actors are not responsible for the scripts: we just need to keep working like any employee and do our best.)