With Bacon on his trip to the edge of sanity, we need someone grounded to fill in for the audience and provide the voice of “what the hell is going on here?” Kathryn Erbe fills this role and does so with oodles of charm and weight. It’s a very precarious tightrope to walk for an actor, but of course he’s up to the task because he’s Kevin freaking Bacon. Again, there’s a dichotomy to Tom, as he’s terrified of the things he’s seeing, but he’s also infatuated with the idea that he has this chance at doing something extraordinary. This sets the stage for the emotional plunge he takes when he begins having these visions. But at the same time, he’s a genuinely loving husband and father who wants to do right by his family even though it pains him to feel so ordinary. He’s that type of guy who’s still clinging to the hope that his shitty garage band will hit it big, and he resents anyone who’s lived life out of his small sliver of experience. On one hand, Tom is kind of an ignorant lout. The primary reason for this is the performance by Kevin Bacon, who has to hit a multitude of notes in just the right way to make the role work. In fact, I probably never would have bothered with this one had I not been with a group that just happened to choose Stir of Echoes as the movie of the night, but the universe must have been smiling on me that day, because this flick really is something special. Movies in the ’90s were usually too polished and sanitary to grab me in any lasting fashion. What’s more, it was released at the tail end of a decade that often had a hard time holding my attention. First, I’ve never been a big fan of ghost stories that often rely on a series of jump scares at the expense of story. This being a haunted house story from the ’90s, on paper I shouldn’t like this movie on two levels. As Tom continues to barrel down the rabbit hole, he starts to realize that something sinister may be hiding right under his nose. He gets progressively more obsessed with these visions, especially as he realizes that Jake has similar abilities. In particular, he starts seeing a young girl (Jennifer Morrison), who seems to be trying to tell him something in a fashion too cryptic for him to understand. That is, of course, until he lets Maggie’s sister, Lisa (Illeana Douglas), hypnotize him and he starts having all manner of visions and premonitions. Living in a working-class Chicago neighborhood with his wife, Maggie (Kathryn Erbe), and his son, Jake (Zachary David Cope), Tom learns early in the film that Maggie is pregnant with a baby that they might need to name “Whoopsie Daisy.” This means he’s pretty well-locked into his job as a lineman (for the countyyyyyy), and his chance at doing something extraordinary with his life is pretty much shot. I’m speaking, of course, of the 1999 David Koepp-directed ghost story, Stir of Echoes.īased on the 1958 novel by Richard Matheson, Stir of Echoes stars Bacon as Tom, the quintessential average Joe. It’s a movie that blends phenomenal acting and creepy atmosphere to create a truly memorable urban gothic tale. One such film didn’t have me expecting much at first, but by the end had me considering it as one of my all-time favorites. He doesn’t often wax nostalgic about his time at Camp Crystal Lake, although that seems less because he feels above it than it does that it was thirty-seven years and almost eighty roles ago.įriday fans (like yours truly) will always remember him as Jack, the likeable guy who ended the summer of 1980 with one hell of a sore throat, but it’s important to remember that he also has some other phenomenal genre work to his credit. Few actors star in a classic horror movie out of the gate and then find mainstream success on their own the way Bacon did. A lot of well-known actors get their start in low-budget horror flicks, but Kevin Bacon happened to cut his teeth in one of the most well-known horror movies of all time, Friday the 13th.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |