At one point, Tom and Maggie are spooked when Jake speaks in a deep, distorted voice one almost expects him to burst out screaming "REDRUM! REDRUM!" When questioned, he snaps at her, "I have to dig!" Anyone paying the slightest bit of attention to the story will have figured out what Tom is digging for long before he does, just as anyone who has seen The Shining will recognize the dysfunctional family dynamics of the Witzkys. Much to the dismay of his wife Maggie (Kathryn Erbe), Tom begins speaking to invisible visitors, drilling holes in the floor and digging alarmingly large holes in the back yard. Like his son, he is able to see dead people, specifically an eighteen-year-old girl named Samantha who disappeared from the neighborhood six months earlier.īefore long, Tom is in the grip of an obsession. She does so with unexpected success, and while mucking around in his brain plants a seemingly innocent suggestion for Tom to "open his mind." He does so with a vengeance, and soon his waking (and sleeping) hours are flooded with fragmentary visions, dreams and hallucinations. Bored with his life and half-drunk at a party one night, Tom calls his loopy New Age sister-in-law (Illeana Douglas) on a bluff and asks her to hypnotize him. Kevin Bacon stars as Jake’s father, Tom Witzky, a telephone lineman and self-described ordinary schlub, who nevertheless manages to pay the rent on an impressive Chicago townhouse. ![]() Most of the echoes in his film are stirred up from earlier, better movies. This isn’t the only trick Koepp has up his sleeve, but it’s one of the few that doesn’t suffer from overfamiliarity. In effect, we become the ghosts peering in at a world where no one else can see us. When speaking to his otherworldly visitors, Jake addresses the camera directly. ![]() Jake chats up the recently deceased with casual aplomb, which actually makes some sense: he simply doesn’t know he’s supposed to be scared.Īdapting a novel by Richard Matheson, writer/director David Koepp (best known for his Jurassic Park screenplay) finds a simple yet eerily effective way of letting the audience in on Jake’s special ability. Now comes Stir of Echoes, featuring the similarly tri-named Zachary David Cope as Jake, a five-year-old boy much more at ease with his supernatural gift than Osment’s Cole Sear. The surprise late summer hit The Sixth Sense continues to haunt theaters, and young star Haley Joel Osment’s extraordinary performance as the sad, whispery kid who sees ghosts everywhere he goes is sure to be remembered when year-end awards are dispensed. Children who communicate with the dead are turning up with increasing frequency at the multiplex these days.
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