Perhaps writer, director David Koepp says it best: "When I first looked at the story, I was swept away. It's a classic ghost story with a twist – the darkly superntural meets up with the incredibly ordinary."
Richard Matheson's 1958 story comes to life in "Stir of Echoes" starring that veteran of violence, Kevin Bacon, as a simple, blue-collar husband and father, Tom Witzky, living a quiet Chicago life with his wife, Kathryn Erbe, and son. Quiet that is, until he attends a party where his sister-in-law, as a light diversion, hypnotizes him. And life is never simple again for Tom.
His encounter with hypnotism brings him a subconscious power he didn't know he possessed, (and now wishes he didn't.) He begins having horrific visions, terrible headaches and develops a fear that his family is in danger.
He discovers a real-life secret having to do with his family, and he becomes compelled to seek the source of all his his visions, and to make things right with the secret he has discovered. All pretty heavy stuff for a simple, family man.
It is rated R for violence, sexuality and language.
The film starts Thursday at Cinema One.
