Stir of Echoes deserved better than it got. In 1999, the harrowing horror-thriller starring Kevin Bacon boasted a unique spin on the haunted house formula. Set in Chicago's South Side and centering on a blue-collared man with rock star ambitions who is plagued by ghostly visions, the film avoided well-worn tropes of fretful suburban housewives besieged by poltergeists.
Its R-rating allowed writer/director David Koepp, best known for scripting the blockbuster Jurassic Park, to create a gritty film, fleshed out with jolting splashes of gore, a sweaty sex appeal, and a harrowing message about sexual politics at its core. But just five weeks before Stir of Echoes would hit theaters, The Sixth Sense debuted.
Koepp's terrific movie earned good reviews and a modest box office, but it was overshadowed by The Sixth Sense, in part because both involve a psychic boy who can see dead people. However, this superficial commonality ignores all the ways Stir of Echoes is extraordinary. Thankfully, over the years, fans have found the frightening film, relishing its textured tale of terror, which has led to a 4K release on Blu-ray and digital, complete with special features.
To toast Stir of Echoes' glossy re-release, Mashable sat down with Koepp via Zoom to dig into his influences both personal and cinematic, the alarmingly timeless message at the film's core, and what he thinks of The Sixth Sense.
Stir of Echoes brought ghost stories to the city.
While Koepp counts horror classics like Steven Spielberg's rural Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Tobe Hooper's suburban-set Poltergeist as inspiration points, he yearned to tell a ghost story that spoke to a community he identified with. "It's the whole reason I wanted to do it," Koepp said of adapting Richard Matheson's 1958 novel, titled A Stir of Echoes.
After making his directorial debut with The Trigger Effect — a thriller that Koepp describes as "straight out of my therapy sessions" — he hungered to "do a scary movie." But he didn't connect to the suburban Southern California setting of Matheson's novel. Plus, that scenario seemed played out by the 1990s. "In ghost stories, it's always some really good-looking people in a really beautiful house — because you want to shoot the beautiful house," Koepp said. "And I get it. But I wanted to see [a ghost story] in an environment I hadn't seen."
Koepp cites Roman Polanski's devilish Rosemary's Baby, which he calls one of his "favorite movies," as an influence, as the setting — a "creepy old apartment in New York City" — gave the film's demonic twists a fresh appeal. Beyond that, he explained, "I wanted it to be something I knew, because I wanted authenticity." This led him to the South Side of Chicago, where his mother was raised.
"Big Irish family, 10 kids, and very working class," he said of that environment, which he frequently visited in his own childhood. "And that neighborhood in the movie is very much like where she grew up, where I went a million times as a kid. And I was like, I know that area. I know how to make that feel real. And I like those people, and I don't see those people in this kind of movie."
The effect in Stir of Echoes is an intense closeness. Whether Kevin Bacon's haunted Tom Witzky is walking to a ballgame alongside his gruff but affable neighbors, searching for clues during a block party, or barging in on the family next door with a troubling epiphany, the audience is aware of how close — geographically and emotionally — the Witzkys are to their neighbors. And that makes Tom's mounting suspicions of them all the more gut-churning.
Stir of Echoes takes on toxic masculinity.
Often stories of haunted homes center on a mother, who is typically seen as inherently more receptive to the needs of others — including the dead. Stir of Echoes instead sets Tom up as a self-centered man who chafes against the obligations of being a father and husband. He complains to his wife Maggie (Kathryn Erbe) about how he expected to be something more than a line worker for the telephone company, clinging faintly to his dreams of being a rock star. And at the start, he seems at best vaguely aware of his five-year-old son Jake (Zachary David Cope), who begins the movie talking to an unseen specter.
"I wanted him to feel thwarted," Koepp said of Tom, "and be at the stage in life where he starts to think, 'Uh oh. I think this is all there is. And I think this is as far as I'm going to go. And that's surprising to me, because I always thought I might be special.' I think we can all relate to that. And I think you can relate to that no matter your level of success, because you think, 'Well, didn't I deserve a little more?'"
In a classic monkey-paw twist, Tom gets what he wants — to be special — but not in the way he wants it. After ignoring the concerns of his pregnant wife and the complaints of his outspoken sister-in-law, Tom's mind is opened by the latter through a bit of hypnotism as a party trick. Now, Tom is keenly aware of another female force in his house, the ghost of a murdered girl named Samantha Kozac (Jennifer Morrison), whose corpse lies in the walls.
And as much as Tom is terrorized by the grisly visions that reflect Samantha's violent end, he's elated to chase down the mystery only he can solve. "I think if something like this did happen in our lives," Koepp said, "it would be pretty damn exciting and interesting, and you'd want to kind of hold on to it as long as you could."
Stir of Echoes hits harder after the Weinstein scandal was made public.
Nearly 20 years after Stir of Echoes hit theaters, the New York Times published an investigative report that broke open decades of allegations against movie producer and sexual predator Harvey Weinstein. While rumors and whisper networks had floated for years around Hollywood, the revelation came as a shock to the nation at large. Watching Stir of Echoes now, in the MeToo era, you can see Tom having the soul-rattling realization that many men in America have had to face as rape culture has become a more publicly debated topic.
The ghost girl in his home was not just killed; her corpse was hidden due to a "boys will be boys" attitude that claims to preserve the community, but only serves to poison it. However, Koepp rejects the idea that the movie was ahead of its time.
He says of the men in his movie, several of whom are killers or accessories after the fact, "They accept the neighborhood structure because that's how it always has been. The protection of the male jocks, the football players, that was nothing new… I grew up in rural Wisconsin, and the guys on the football team got away with whatever they wanted to get away with." He continued, "The men in the neighborhood banding together to protect [the jocks], and the women pretend[ing] they didn't see that? It was pretty obvious that that's what was going on to anybody who wanted to talk about it."
In Stir of Echoes, Tom's quest to find out what happened to Samantha nearly gets him killed to preserve the jocks' — and the block's — secret shame. But ultimately, Samantha has a happy ending; her killers and their accomplices are exposed, and her spirit is restored, able to walk home whole.
To Koepp, ghost stories are timeless, because "their premise is fundamentally hopeful." He explained, "If you accept that there's a ghost in the house, you are saying, 'Hey, great news. There's something after we die.' And who doesn't want to think that? So the darkest ghost story you can possibly conceive is ultimately hopeful."
Moving on from Stir of Echoes vs. The Sixth Sense
In the special featurettes on Stir of Echoes' new Blu-ray and digital release, Koepp recounts how he warned Stir of Echoes' distributor, Artisan Entertainment, that The Sixth Sense was set to open weeks ahead of his movie.
"It was fairly early on in post [production]," Koepp says in the Lionsgate-produced interview, "we heard about this other movie. Sixth Sense had been around town; people had read it. So we got a copy of the script and read it. And we told Artisan… 'There's this movie, it's got a psychic kid. It's got ghosts, set in urban Philadelphia, and it's got Bruce Willis in it. We should come out before that. They're coming out in August.'"
In response, Artisan told Koepp, "We're not worried. It looks soft." He went on matter-of-factly, "That movie came out and was a phenomenon."
In our interview, Koepp recalled his frustration over one critic — who should know better about how long it takes to put a movie together — who suggested that Stir of Echoes was copying The Sixth Sense, even though it opened just the month before. "Some review in some reputable publication started with the sentence, 'It's amazing how quickly Hollywood emulates success.'" Koepp shared. "I was like, yeah, but five weeks, really?"
The experience still stings Koepp. "You don't wish to think of your movie in terms of any other movie. Your movie is your movie. I was frustrated by the experience of not being able to come out first."
So, what did Koepp think when he saw The Sixth Sense. "I just haven't seen it," he admitted. "I hear it's terrific. I should watch it sometime."
Stir of Echoes will be released on 4K UHD + Blu-ray + Digital on Dec. 10.
