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Stir of Echoes
After being hypnotized by his sister-in-law, Tom Witzky begins seeing haunting visions of a girl's ghost and a mystery begins to unfold around her.
1999 · Directed by David Koepp · 99 min · Horror · Mystery · Thriller · Screenplay in the scene database · 8 frames
Tagline
In every mind there is a door that should never be opened.
Plot
Tom Witzky is a phone lineman living in a working-class neighborhood in Chicago with his pregnant wife Maggie and his son Jake, who possesses the ability to communicate with the dead, although neither Tom nor Maggie yet know about it. At a party one evening, Tom challenges Maggie's sister, Lisa, who is a believer in paranormal activity, to hypnotize him. After putting him under, Lisa plants a post-hypnotic suggestion in Tom urging him to "be more open-minded". Tom then begins experiencing visions of a violent scuffle involving a girl who he learns is Samantha Kozac, a 17-year-old who disappeared from the neighborhood six months earlier and had an intellectual disability, with the mental capacity of an eight-year-old and thus a child's tendency to trust strangers.
While Tom and Maggie attend a high-school football game, Jake is overheard by his babysitter, Debbie, as he speaks with Samantha. Debbie gets upset and snatches Jake, running off with him in the night. Tom senses Jake is in danger and sees strange flashes of red light that lead him to the Metra station where Debbie is speaking with her mother about Jake. When Tom and Maggie confront her and with a police officer now present, Debbie angrily questions them about her sister Samantha, explaining that she ran away from home.
Tom becomes obsessed with Samantha and begins probing members of the community about her disappearance. This attracts the attention of his landlord Harry Damon, Tom's friend, Frank McCarthy and their respective sons Kurt Damon and Adam McCarthy, who all dismiss Samantha as a runaway teen. After another prophetic vision in which Frank tells Tom that "they're going to kill you and Maggie both," Tom finds that Adam has shot himself in Frank's home and is in critical condition.
Plot summary from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA.
Crew
- Screenplay: David Koepp
- Written by: Andrew Kevin Walker
- Cinematography: Fred Murphy
- Edited by: Jill Savitt
- Music: James Newton Howard
- Production design: Nelson Coates
- Produced by: Judy Hofflund, Gavin Polone
Cast
- Kevin Bacon as Tom Witzky
- Kathryn Erbe as Maggie Witzky
- Illeana Douglas as Lisa Weil
- Zachary David Cope as Jake Witzky
- Kevin Dunn as Frank McCarthy
- Conor O'Farrell as Harry Damon
- Liza Weil as Debbie Kozac
- Lusia Strus as Sheila McCarthy
- Stephen Eugene Walker as Bobby
- Mary Kay Cook as Vanessa Damon
Production
- Country: United States of America
- Language: English, Korean, Spanish
- Studios: Artisan Entertainment, Hofflund/Polone
- Budget: $12,000,000
- Box office: $21,142,914
- Themes: obsession, cemetery, paranoia, grave, haunted house, hypnosis, tools, clairvoyance, murder, disappearance
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