Stir of Echoes (1999) on Netflix
R19991h 39mHorrorMysteryThriller
Lineman Tom Witzky lets his sister-in-law Lisa hypnotize him and suggest he be more open-minded. He begins seeing visions of Samantha Kozac, a teenager who went missing from his neighborhood.
- Netflix3.7/5
- IMDb6.9/1093,712 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes68%
Trailer
Plot summary
Tom Witzky works as a phone lineman in a Chicago neighborhood, where he lives with his pregnant wife Maggie and their son Jake. At a party, Tom challenges his sister-in-law Lisa, a believer in hypnosis and psychic communication, to put him under. She plants a suggestion that he be more open-minded, and that night he sees a violent scuffle and the ghost of Samantha Kozac, a seventeen-year-old with an intellectual disability who had gone missing from the neighborhood six months before. Jake sees Samantha as well, and while the boy stays calm, Tom grows angry that the visions will not stop. Debbie Kozac, Jake's babysitter and Samantha's sister, becomes frantic when she learns that Jake has been talking to Samantha. Tom begins asking neighbors about the girl.
Cast
- Mary Kay Cookas Vanessa Damon
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Stir of Echoes (1999)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Bacon's tooth extraction scene was inspired by a nightmare Koepp had about dying of age, and was achieved with practical effects: "We blacked out Kevin's tooth and built a cap to go over it, so he's pulling out a cap that comes off fairly easily," with grunts and crunching flesh noises added.
- Koepp and director of photography Fred Murphy filmed the story's ghost at a slow six frames per second, an in-camera effect that gives the being a strange, otherworldly way of moving.
- Koepp remembered being high-strung about approaching Matheson for his thoughts on the script, terrified that his changes might displease the author. Matheson, who admired Koepp's directorial debut The Trigger Effect, responded positively: "He has a very good touch".
- Director Brian De Palma paid the set a visit and offered Koepp some ideas, one of them shooting a long take of Kevin Bacon during the first half of a long dialogue scene.
- Among Koepp's influences for the film were Roman Polanski's Repulsion (1965) and Rosemary's Baby (1968), and David Cronenberg's The Dead Zone (1983).
