Thanks to Paul for this long-standing request, selected by our Patrons. This Kevin Bacon haunting film, based on a novel by Richard Matheson, got a little buried by the Sixth Sense when it was released. Coincidentally, they share similar themes, and Stir of Echoes is stylishly directed by accomplished screenwriter David Koepp. We had nothing bad to say about it. Enjoy!
Stir of Echoes (1999)
Episode 399, 2 Guys and a Chainsaw Podcast
Todd: Hello and welcome to another episode of Two Guys and a Chainsaw. I’m Todd.
Craig: And I’m Craig.
Todd: Well, it is about time for another request. And as always, we send our requests over to our patrons. Every request that we get goes into a separate video. stack, and then we pick out a few, usually try to follow like a theme or something so that they’re all kind of comparable.
And we put a little poll up there. Craig put the poll together this time. And what was the theme? It was like haunted house movies? Yeah, hauntings. Yeah, it was loose, loose jumble of haunted house movies. And we ended up with a tie, a tie between stir of echoes and grave encounters. And at the time of this recording, anyway, everyone got their votes in and it’s still a tie.
So we. Actually, we had a preference. You did. I did. And I was willing to go along with it, because I also wanted to see Stir of Echoes. Had you seen this before?
Craig: Oh yeah.
Todd: Okay. You know, when I watched it, I was like, God, I feel like I’ve seen it before, but I didn’t remember any of it.
Craig: Well, that’s, maybe that’s good.
You know what I’m saying? Like, maybe, just kind of seeing it with fresh eyes, I think. Right. I kind of wish that I could see it with fresh eyes again. Ah. I’ve actually seen it many, many times because, I think I probably mentioned this before, but when I was in college, I didn’t have cable. I couldn’t afford it.
So, I just had like this extensive collection of DVDs and before the era of streaming, we would just watch the same things over and over again. Of course. And this was a movie that Alan and I both really liked. And so we would just pop it in periodically. So I’ve seen it a bunch of times. It’s been a really long time since I’ve seen it, but watching it again, I actually kind of wished That I could be seeing it for the first time because there were no surprises.
In fact, I found myself, you know, I’m taking notes and I found myself typing out lines that I wanted to remember before they said them. You have this down. Yeah. Like I knew, I knew what the next line coming was and I knew it was important. So I already had it typed out before they even said it. So I I’m glad that, yeah.
whether or not you have seen it before that it was kind of fresh for you. I’ll be interested to see what your response was.
Todd: It might’ve been one of those things that like people had on and I saw little bits and pieces, that kind of thing. It’s a 1999 movie. And so I would have been in college when this came out and it stars Kevin Bacon and I love Kevin Bacon.
Clip: I
Todd: love that guy. He seems like a cool guy too. He just seems like, yeah, the coolest. And he just plays so many interesting roles, and he’s good in all of them, and so, and he was good in this too, I thought the acting in this movie was solid. And the director is David Koepp. David Koepp, he’s the career I want to have.
He’s more of a writer than a director. This is not his directorial debut, but it was his first big hit. Well, I mean, it was his first, like, big movie, and it probably would have been bigger if it hadn’t come out the same year that The Sixth Sense did.
Craig: Right.
Todd: And so, there’s a big sense among the people who are involved in this movie that it just kind of got buried in the success of that and a couple other movies that came out around the same time.
But he, I mean, this guy wrote the screenplay for Jurassic Park. He, one of his first big screen plays was Toy Soldiers, and we love Toy Soldiers so much that we did a mini sode about it for our patrons, and I think that was as long as a regular episode, that’s how much, we couldn’t justify that as a horror movie because it’s not at all, but we had to pay tribute to, uh, it was Louis Gossett Jr.,
right? What a great movie. And then of course, uh, Death Becomes Her after that. Jurassic Park, Carlito’s Way, which won so many awards that year for the Academy Awards. Have you seen the shadow that Alec Baldwin was in back in 1990s, the mid 90s? If
Craig: so, I don’t remember it. I mean, I can picture it in my mind, but
Todd: That was one of those superhero movies that kind of came on the heels of the Tim Burton Batman, so they were really going for the dark kind of superhero that I love that movie.
I think it’s great. I’ve always liked it. It wasn’t a huge success, and I don’t understand why, but it had like Alec Baldwin in it, Tim Curry is, is one of the villains, it’s got great music, it’s got a great soundtrack, and I just, I love that movie. So he wrote that, he wrote the screenplay and story for the, the Mission Impossible movie that Tom Cruise did that kicked off that whole franchise, so, Snake Eyes, Panic Room, Jesus.
Did he write
Craig: the two most recent Indiana Jones movies? Did I, See that?
Todd: Yes, he did. Yeah. Yeah, he did. Take that with a For better, for worse. For better, for worse, exactly. I liked the most recent one, actually. The one before it, yeah, was kind of, oh, disappointing. They were both,
Craig: okay. But whatever, it’s Indiana Jones.
You get the chance to write an Indiana Jones script, you write an Indiana Jones script. So, good for him. No
Todd: joke.
Craig: You know, he’s, you’re right. His career has been amazing. And, You know, this was horror, but I think the other big draw for me at the time was Kevin Bacon because I’ve been a fan of Kevin Bacon my whole life.
Probably first introduced in Footloose, of course, but he was also in, I think the first Friday the 13th and he’s just been around forever and he’s still working all the time. He just seems like a cool guy. Like he just seems like somebody you’d want to be friends with. Like he seems like a fun, very down to earth guy.
Todd: My mom admires him because he’s been married to the same woman for 30 years.
Craig: And she’s amazing and, and they’re adorable as a couple. And she’s a brilliant actress also. And, you know, they live on a farm and they sing to their animals and they’re just like, it’s disgusting how adorable and you mentioned that he plays all kinds of characters and really interesting characters and does it very well.
And, and you’re absolutely right, but he’s another one of those actors that we’ve talked about. Acting is a job and he has, he’s been really transparent. He and. Kira, Kira, I can never remember Sedgwick, his wife, his beautiful wife. They’ve been very transparent about how they lost everything in some big investment scam.
And so they continue to work. He continues to work as much as he does because they have to. They’re just so cool. They’re, they say, you know, don’t feel sorry for us. You know, it’s, it’s fine. This is our job. We, they’re just the coolest people. And the movie, I don’t know. I remember the trailer. I didn’t rewatch it, so I hope I’m not just, you know, making this up in my head.
But I feel like the movie heavily features the Rolling Stones Paint It Black. And, and I think I remember the trailer featuring that too. And as soon as the trailer opened, those first chords of Paint It Black start. And those chords are just so eerie in themselves. Like, that’s such a great song. Oh yeah.
I love the Stones, particularly their older stuff. But, um, funny enough. My 60 something year old mother went to a Rolling Stones concert last week. No way. With a bunch of other Women of a particular age and, uh, they had the most amazing time.
Todd: You know, I don’t know. What’s more amazing is that your mother went there or the stones are still having concerts.
I mean, I know, right? I think Jagger’s like
Craig: 88 or something like that. I don’t know. He’s, he’s super old, but anyway, so that, that haunting song combined with kind of the haunting imagery that, you know, you, you see, and I remember, you know, the, in the trailer. You see Kevin Bacon being hypnotized because that’s a big part of it.
And the imagery of that scene, which we’ll talk about in a second, but scored by the haunting chords of that song. And I was just in, and I’m pretty sure I saw this in the theater. I don’t remember. All I know is I have the DVD somewhere and have had forever and I’ve watched it a bazillion times and I like it.
I don’t know that it’s aged well, or, or maybe we just don’t see this type of movie. Very much anymore. I don’t know. I can’t put my finger on it.
Todd: I know what you mean. Actually, it’s filmed quite well. Oh, it’s beautifully shot.
Craig: I think
Todd: the cinematography is great. It feels nineties, but maybe only because I know it’s nineties.
Cause it doesn’t have that like distinctly nineties feel. And I don’t know what I really mean by that. I guess just things are very well lit. Everything is quite clean. The people are clean. Clean, you know, it’s like it takes place in a suburban Chicago neighborhood, and it’s just a bunch of white people
Clip: Yeah,
Todd: and they’re all just middle class.
Well, I guess he’s Supposedly blue collar, but look at right
Craig: That drove me crazy I lived in that area or an area very much like that and He is a lineman, which is you know, that’s actually a pretty lucrative career for
Todd: sure You
Craig: But she, I don’t even know if she works. I don’t even think she works. I don’t remember, but they live in this enormous brownstone.
And at some point late in the movie, he’s complaining about something like he’s, he’s just all worked up about something. And so he tries to like turn on a water. Spout, and it doesn’t come on, and he, under his breath, mumbles, 800 a month, my ass. And I was like, there is no I don’t even care. In 1997, when this movie was probably made, there is no way that huge ass brownstone was 800 a month.
Todd: My god, then, you know what? If they were really hard up on money, they they could sell their furniture, and all their fancy china, and all the stuff that was outfitting this house. I mean
Craig: I lived in a two bedroom flat on the first floor. Third or fourth floor and it was 1, 200 a month. Now it was in a beautiful area and you know, it, it looks a little bit like this area, except the brownstones weren’t separated.
They were, everything was kind of connected. So it was a nice area, but still, come on, but we’re getting into the minutiae. I think maybe part of why it seems a little bit dated to me is because. I feel like we consume this type of story now more through television crime procedurals.
Todd: Yeah, it’s like a one episode.
Craig: Yeah, this movie in particular reminded me of the show Cold Case.
Todd: Did you ever watch that show? I never did, but I’ve heard of it, and it sounds like an awesome show.
Craig: It was really good, and it was just like this. It was, you know, they were digging up these old unresolved cases, but you got to, you always, within the show, as they’re investigating and interviewing people, you get to see, in fuzzy recreation, the flashbacks to the events as they really happened.
Oh, okay. And then, in the end, whoever, it’s always centered around a murder. It’s always homicide. In the end, the, the person who’s dead, the actor who has been portraying them appears and like locks eyes with the lead investigator to like, you’re like, thank you.
While, while an amazing pop culture in the now moment song plays in the back, or just something that’s really relevant to the story like this. Now, Paint it Black isn’t necessarily relevant to the events of the story, it’s just kind of a theme, both visually and, and, you know, audibly. It’s just kind of a theme, but it works, and it’s that kind of tie.
Seriously, you can go back and watch old episodes of Cold Case. They’re still good. I really, and they’re one offs, you know, like, Of course there are like season arcs with the main characters and stuff, but those don’t really matter. It’s the, you know, the case of the week. That’s really cool. And this reminded me of that.
And it is a mystery and I like it. I can’t think of anything that I don’t like about it, but like the fuzzy, brightly lit flashbacks, it’s got a very 90s feel and it’s not as though we still don’t see that kind of stuff, but we see, I think we see it more in
Todd: Cinema you’re right. It’s like 90s television and it could have been now that you mentioned it could have been an episode of One of these things it
Craig: could it very easily could have been
Todd: I mean that’s not to disparage it It just you know, it’s it’s that kind of story
Craig: I think that it’s elevated by the style and by the acting I think Kevin Bacon gives a tour de force Performance in this movie.
He basically carries the whole thing on his back.
Todd: It’s all about him. Really?
Craig: It is all about him and he does a really good job of playing tough but vulnerable
Clip: You
Craig: know, I I think that he is a tough guy and he’s also a trouble guy Okay, so, you know, they’re like this blue collar lower middle class family.
They live in this Decent neighborhood, you know, like you said it’s a bunch of white suburbanites They’re, you know, they have block parties seemingly every night.
Todd: That was another thing that I was like rolling my eyes at. But on the other hand, I was like, I kind of like seeing this portrayal because, talking about my family, I’m the oldest of three and my second oldest sister, she and her husband have in their later years, like, you know, like me, like my age, they managed to have these kinds of parties with their neighbors.
Mhm. I don’t. But, you know, they, you know, open up the garage and people come in and they, like, drink and smoke cigars and turn on music and talk about what’s going on and things like that. And I think that’s really cool. It’s like college continued. For them. I wouldn’t have believed that, you know, this actually happened, except, like I said, my sister and her husband do this in Kansas City on a fairly regular basis.
Still? Well. I think it’s a dying
Craig: practice. I just read an article yesterday about third spaces, like back before the era of, you know, the internet, we had work, we had home, but then we had all these third spaces too, like the mall or the arcade or the roller rink or the bowling alley or block parties, you know, all these third spaces where you could interact, you know, do things, occupy yourself and interact with other people.
And they’re disappearing all of those things. are disappearing. And I think that this type of social interaction between neighbors is disappearing too. I know my neighbors by sight. I’ll throw them a little wave, you know, if I drive by or whatever, but I don’t even know their names or anything.
Todd: Don’t get me started on this, man.
I have a whole life philosophy built around this concept that that’s one of the reasons why we’re so polarized right now is that people don’t get together face to face and just interact. People just say stuff online to folks that they would never say in person and people have more patience with each other in person.
They just navigate things better and the less we practice that, maybe the more we’ll even lose that skill.
Craig: Yeah.
Todd: And then the only people you’re having a block party with are the, you know, the five or six friends that you met online that you know you already agree with on anything and the reason you’re having this block party is so that you can like, Talk politics and bitch about some other group, you know, like,
Clip: Oh
Todd: yeah, I’ve got a whole philosophy about this.
I think it’s terrible. I tried to build a business around this whole thing and it didn’t, didn’t pan out. But, uh, anyway, yeah, I totally get what you’re saying, but I think they still get together with their adult friends and go out and do adult things. And I admire that. And I like seeing is portrayed in a movie.
The movie makes it look like they have these huge, like, it’s like a high school party in a slasher movie, right? We’re just like. Everybody and their mother’s over drinking at someone’s house. And
Craig: the characters that we meet and we don’t need a lot of them, you know, this is a huge event and eventually as the night gets later, I just want to mention because I think it’s adorable.
Like I think it’s actually brilliant. The block, the, the party is right across the street from their house, so they don’t even hire a sitter. They just take the baby monitor with them. Now, I don’t know if the baby monitor would really stretch that far, but if it does. Yeah,
Todd: it’s a brilliant idea and like, if this weren’t the night, if this were today, it would just be like an app on your phone.
Right. And like a whole camera. Sure.
Craig: He’s right across the street. Like it’s, it’s perfect. But anyway, the only people that we meet at this party, aside from Maggie’s sister, Maggie is the wife. She’s played by Catherine Urba. We meet her sister, Lisa, who’s played by Ileana Douglas. I don’t even know. Cool. I couldn’t even name something else that Ileana Douglas has been in, but I love her.
Yeah, I think she’s hilarious every time she pops up. She’s Maggie’s sister, and she and Tom, Kevin Bacon, have kind of the, you know, the snipey brother in law, sister in law relationship. Like,
Clip: I
Craig: don’t think they really hate each other, but they just kind of bust each other’s chops all the time, whatever.
Todd: She’s like the crunchy person and he’s like just a down to earth, working class, skeptical guy, right? Exactly.
Craig: Exactly. And all that comes to a head at the end of the party, but I was, what I was trying to get at is all the other people all kind of live in a high school mentality. Yeah. We really only meet a few.
There are, there’s like two neighbors, Harry, And Frank. Frank, I recognize he’s played by a man named Kevin Dunn. I didn’t look him up, but recognizable. And both of them, they just can’t stop talking about their sons and high school football.
Clip: So Tom, how are you liking the neighborhood? You know, I grew up just over Bridgeport, back in the yard, so it’s a foreign country.
That being right, it’s not a foreign country. This is the best neighborhood in the city of Chicago. That’s because we all look out for each other. And as he’s saying a lot, as we approach the year of our Lord 2000.
Craig: And it seemed very much in place to me. Like, yep, that’s what these guys would be talking about at this party.
Like, people would be talking about it all the time. Like, shut up. You’re living in the past, man. I know. But the party culminates, you know, it dies down. There’s only like, you know, you know, 10 people left or whatever. They’re all sitting around in a living room and they’re teasing Lisa, uh, the sister about being psychic.
And she’s like, no, I totally am. And it’s all real. And I can hypnotize people. And they’re like, we’ll hypnotize somebody. And she says, no, I can’t. She says, no, I can’t for a couple of reasons, but Kevin Bacon’s like hypnotize me. And she’s like, no, I’ve been drinking. You’ve been drinking. It’s dangerous. And he’s like, come on, come on, I’m not drunk.
I loved how he said that line too. I’m not drunk. Like,
Clip: it’s so obvious.
Craig: More than in any other moment that he was totally drunk. Right. But then she hypnotizes him and I just love this sequence. It’s a visually interesting Like, she kind of lulls him into it, which I read in the trivia, that the methods that she used are actual methods for hypnosis.
They were, actually concerned that audience members might fall into hypnosis. So at the end of the sequence, there’s a bell tone that’s meant to bring people out if they have fallen under. And according to, and according to, you know, what I read, you know, who knows, but some audience members supposedly did kind of go under, but were brought out by that bell tone.
Todd: Hypnosis is a real thing, but it’s not what movies make it seem to be. I mean, there are no magic words that do it, right? But it’s just suggestion, but it really depends on the participants willingness to go along with it.
Craig: Right.
Todd: You can’t really, like, hypnotize people against their will. But, I don’t know, I guess, I suppose, if there were audience members who were kind of really into it, really willing to go along with it, maybe they, maybe they
Craig: fell under or something.
Well, and maybe it would pro I don’t It may be too long, I don’t know, but Well, she says something like, it’s risky. I may end up opening doors that you’ve never opened before. And he says, well, what’s the worst that can happen? She says, close your eyes.
Clip: Now I want you to Pretend you’re in a theater, a movie theater,
and there, it’s one of those great old movie palaces. And you look around, it’s a huge, empty theater. You notice that the walls of the theater are painted in black,
and the seats are covered in black. And in the whole pitch black theater, there’s only one thing you can see, and that’s the white screen.
Craig: It’s almost like he’s kind of falling away from her and immediately his mind and what we’re seeing is what he’s seeing in his mind. His mind pictures theater for the stage, like for a stage production, and then it says a movie theater and it immediately switches to a movie theater and everything just gets washed over in black.
And all of this is just really cool. Fading effects, but they’re fast. Like it’s not like it takes them a while to conjure something. She just says something in it and immediately shifts in such a really, really cool way. I love it. And then she says you look at the screen and there are letters on the screen and you can’t quite make them out.
You’re you float closer and closer to the screen and we see all of this and you finally, when you get up in front of the screen, the letters say sleep. And then it goes into a bunch of quick shots. There’s a, just a really quick shot of. Their house and you hear screaming and then it seems like you see like somebody’s face like struggling under plastic and then Snap, he wakes up and he’s freaking out and everybody else is amused because she lisa has successfully hypnotized Him and she’s had him do things under hypnosis That they all saw.
Like, I don’t know, they may, she made him say something funny, I don’t remember, but the thing that they were most impressed with was that he stuck a safety pin all the way through the meat of his hand, and she told him, stick it through and only bleed on one side, and he did. And so they’re all amused by that, but he’s freaking out, and he’s also really thirsty.
I guess being hypnotized makes you thirsty, I don’t know, it’s a thing in this movie.
Todd: It’s a cool sequence, because It takes us into him, instead of, like, I don’t know, every time I see hypnosis on TV or in movies it’s usually we’re watching the person being hypnotized and we’re seeing what they’re spitting out. We’re rarely ever in the mind of the person being hypnotized. This is what it would be like, you just wake up, and like, all this stuff that he’s not aware of, they’re all laughing their heads off that he did, right?
And we don’t even know what it is, because we didn’t see it either. Cause we were in his mind, and I thought that was cool, but what we did see was the disturbing things. Right. And apparently this opened doors, and here’s the thing, like, like again, she’s very critical of him, she says that he’s too closed minded, and so her goal was to kind of quote unquote open his mind, but now the conceit is, his mind has been opened.
Been opened like psychically. Yeah. You know, so now he sees things and, and is aware of things and is tapped into oth the other, the otherly realm in certain ways. And man, if we could just do this to everybody, that would be kind of cool. . Well, I think that the, to sit down at a party and do that, I
Craig: think that the movie suggests that he has always had these.
Abilities, he just hasn’t opened those doors before because the son. Oh,
Todd: I totally skipped that the very opening The opening scene of the film if i’m not mistaken is his son is looking straight into the camera Yeah and talking but
Craig: he’s having a one sided conversation And it sounds like he’s answering questions But we don’t know who or what he’s looking at, and Kevin Bacon’s just sitting in the background playing guitar.
Yeah. And eventually Kevin Bacon comes It is creepy, and eventually Kevin Bacon comes and he pulls the kid out of the tub and he dries him off and whatever, and he goes to get the kid’s pajamas, and the kid’s standing there and he’s just looking at the And he says, Can I ask a question? And he pauses as though for a response.
And then he says, Does it hurt to be dead? Then it moves on.
Todd: The movie does a great job of starting off creepy. Yeah. And kind of maintaining that. And a lot of it has to do with this son. Whenever you’re just kind of getting, whenever you’re just kind of drifting off into all these social situations or whatever.
You’re kind of reminded, wait a minute, there’s something creepy going on with this son. Like, even when he’s at the party, that baby monitor’s crackling, and you can hear the son asking questions of some other person. Who’s obviously, you know, he’s in bed in what’s supposed to be an empty room, right? And so there’s just Sprinkles of that kind of thing throughout it that just make it so creepy from the beginning It’s just I felt like the movie from the beginning and all throughout was unsettling even before The main events start dropping.
Craig: I know that’s what
Todd: and I like
Craig: it’s funny because I I told alan i’m like, I don’t know what i’m gonna say about it because I still like it But I remembered liking it so much And I don’t know that I liked it that much this time around and I said what is it that we liked about it? And he said I don’t know it was just different And I said, What do you mean?
How is it different? And he paused for a second, and then he goes, I don’t know. It just scared me.
Todd: Well, I think you might have hit it earlier. Like it was different for the time. I mean, for a mainstream movie to kind of be like this. I mean, think about when Sixth Sense came out. The exact same time. At the exact same time.
That was huge. And that was a mind blowing movie for all of us. But would it blow your mind now?
Craig: Probably not, because I feel like that was the very last moment where you could still surprise people. I I think that now, we would all know. That’s true. We would all know the big twist before we even got into the theater, unless we worked really hard not to find out.
Todd: Now, the trailer would spoil it. Yeah!
Craig: It totally would. happen. So lame. Oh, God. Yeah, what I was gonna say before is I think it’s safe to say, Kevin Bacon does have psychic abilities. He just didn’t know it before. And this is based on a book by Richard Matheson who has written a lot of really cool stuff.
Todd: He’s brilliant. He’s been all over film. Mostly sci fi, fantasy, Twilight Zone. So many Twilight Zone episodes were either written by him or based on stuff he’s written. I might be wrong, but I Thought he might be the original author of Planet of the Apes and he definitely was the original author of I Am Legend, which has been done like six different times.
First by Vincent Price. Did you ever see that one? No. The Last Man on Earth? No. God, it, it’s okay. It’s actually kind of a boring movie, but I love Vincent Price. I’ll watch him in anything. Right. But I remember as a kid watching the Charlton Heston version called The Omega Man. And that was a movie that creeped me the hell out as a kid because all the people who are left on earth are these sort of like vampire type people with white eyes and that movie was good.
I mean, I don’t know if it still holds up today, but when I was a kid, uh, the Omega Man was just crazy. And then of course, like later on, I think it was done two or three more times, Will Smith. I’ve seen literal I am legend. Uh, that was a pretty good movie. I like that one But I mean, no richard matheson is like a god in my book as a writer.
He’s insanely good Yeah, he’s done tons of cool. I’ve read the book too.
Craig: You read this book.
Todd: No, I read I am legend I was gonna say
Craig: I want to read this book now because I think that they made some pretty significant changes But one of the things that’s in the book is that We get more background about Kevin Bacon’s character.
Like as it turned out, I think he was working as a lifeguard when he was a teenager and his psychic abilities helped him to save the life of Maggie, his wife. And that’s how they met and that’s how they got together. And like there’s other changes too. I, I would be really interested in, in reading the book, but I do think because he immediately starts, visions.
First, he’s asleep. Well, he’s tossing and turning in bed with his wife. I want to say again, this scene where they’re just laying in bed and they’re lit from the lights outside and it’s, it’s all blue light and it’s so much blue light and shadow. I think that there’s a lot of really good cinematography. I think this movie is stylish in the way that it’s shot and I think that it’s Attention is paid and, and care is given to what you’re seeing on the screen, and I really appreciate that.
And then he starts having these very stylized dreams of the hypnosis, but he has flash His wife starts to make love to him, but he starts having flashes of some really horrible imagery, like a bloody tooth skidding across the floor and a fingernail breaking and really gruesome stuff that pulls him out of it.
And at some point, like he can’t sleep, so he goes downstairs and he puts on the TV, but he, I love this shot. He grabs the remote. Off the coffee table. He sits down, he turns the TV on, he leans forward and the camera follows him as he leans forward to put the remote back down. And when he leans back, there is a ghost sitting right next to him.
It’s like
Todd: a classic jump scare.
Craig: It’s fantastic.
Todd: But it’s so effective. The movie’s full of these little moments, and, and they’re good. They’re creepy, and I jumped almost every single time. And then, I don’t remember if it’s this moment, or a little bit later, on the heels of this, that he goes to the bathroom, and he looks in the mirror, and he sees his tooth, and he, he pulls his tooth out, and drops it in the sink, And then when he looks back up, I mean, and like, you know, his lip is bleeding and everything like that, and he looks back up And suddenly, his tooth is back, and it’s all clear, and whatever.
And I read in, I don’t know if it’s a trivia or Wikipedia, that that shot was done all in one take. I think I read that too. Yeah, that he had like a false tooth in front of that tooth, and he pulled it off, and then dropped it, and that when the camera panned down, quickly, someone from off camera ran in with a rag, and just like, wiped the blood away from his face, and that, whatever was The black piece or whatever was on his real tooth just in time for the camera to pan back up again.
That, that was cool.
Craig: Yeah, I think, I don’t know, I think that ghost reveal that I just talked about, I think that was done in one shot too. I think the actress slipped in, you know, quickly when the camera was briefly panned away.
Todd: And why not, yeah?
Craig: Sure, but I mean, I say ghost, she’s just, she’s brighter. It’s almost like she’s like a, She seems corporeal.
I mean, she seems like she’s physically there, but she also almost seems like a television image or something like she’s brighter or she, I mean, she’s kind of all in blacks and whites and grays and she’s got kind of a glowing aura around her, but she’s not a wisp. You know, it’s not like she’s like a wisp of smoke.
She’s there and he’s freaked out. And of course he is. And the next day he’s freaked out and he calls his sister in law and he’s like, did you do something to me? And she’s like, no, not really. I mean, yeah, I did. And she says, I just said, You know, when you wake up, your mind will be totally open. And I, I think she was speaking figuratively, like you’ll be more open minded.
But he apparently psychically took it as your mind is open, like open to all these other things. And he’s kind of troubled by this for a while. Then there’s a scene where, like, I feel like they just went out the night before, but apparently they want to go out again. And the mom is in the foreground on the phone talking.
She’s like. You know, how are we going to get a sitter or something? The kid is in the background behind her, again, talking to somebody who’s not there. And then he says over his shoulders to the mom, Try Lucy. Ask her about so and so. Out of nowhere, he knows So she calls her friend Lucy and she’s like, Oh, do you guys use so and so for a sitter?
Yeah. Are, are you going out tonight? No. Great. Okay. Well we’ll hire so and so. So they hire this girl to come over. So obviously this has been suggested to the kid. I mean, we see it happen. We don’t hear it, but we see it. This girl comes over and Kevin Bacon opens the door and is sitting The immediately when he opens the door, everything goes red, like radioactive red.
There’s even like a buzzing, like a radioactive buzzing. It couldn’t be more like warning, warning. That’s what it looks like. And he’s really unsettled. And he keeps looking at her and she’s looking at him. Now, really, The reason that she’s looking at him weird is because he’s looking at her weird. Like, she’s just this teenage girl.
But he’s got, you know, he’s just really bugged out. But you’re not sure at this point, right? No, we only know that in
Todd: retrospect. Yeah. We’re like, is she creepy? What’s going on?
Craig: When I’m watching this the first time, I’m thinking, Bro, this is clearly a warning like something is not right
Clip: Yeah,
Craig: and I think that that’s what he thinks too But this is also new and he doesn’t know what it all means He’s very unsettled, but he goes and again The entire neighborhood is going to a football game and you would think they were you know Trying to get in to see the rolling stones because there’s crazy security and like these line this crowd of people There’s like crushing themselves to get into this place He keeps seeing red everywhere.
He keeps getting these flashes of red. Meanwhile, the babysitter Here’s the kid on the baby monitor and he’s saying things like, I don’t know. I haven’t seen her yet and, and like weird, creepy things. And so she goes up to check on him and she’s like, who are you talking to? And he’s like, Samantha. She’s like, what?
And he’s like, yeah, Samantha. I talk to her, talk to her all the time. And the babysitter starts freaking out. When, where is she? Where do you talk to her? What? And he, uh, I don’t know, he’s not, doesn’t really seem scared, but he’s like, Stop yelling at me, you’re hurting me. But he won’t really tell her anything.
So she grabs him and throws him over her shoulder and runs out. Now, I have no idea what’s happening at this point.
Todd: Yeah, I was so confused. But Kevin Bacon,
Craig: it’s like, he knows, like he gets a flash of red again and he says aloud to himself. She’s taking him and he turns around and he starts running home and his wife sees him and so she follows She’s just a little bit behind he gets home and he checks the house And they’re not there.
He meets his wife on the street and he’s like, he’s not there And she’s like, what do we do? And he just takes off running and she says where are you going? He says I don’t know they end up At the train station where they find the girl and there’s a big confrontation with the police because obviously Kevin Bacon and his wife are scared They don’t know what’s happening.
You know, this babysitter has stolen their son taken him to the train station They assume she’s trying to board a train And there’s a big confrontation, and the girl, the babysitter, is very upset.
Clip: If you tell me where she is, I’ll tell you where she is! Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey! Everybody shut up! Are you okay?
That girl kidnapped our son! Is that your child? You asked him about Samantha! I’m asking about that boy who sure as hell doesn’t look like he belongs to you! Wait, I can explain this, alright? I’m not talking to you. I’m talking to her. Is that boy your child? No, she was babysitting for us. We never used her before, but you know what you’ve done is a felony young lady.
You can go to jail for this. Where were you taking him? I wasn’t taking him anywhere. Then why the hell did you bring him to a train station? I’m going to press charge him. Look, she came here because of me, alright? I work here. I’m her mother.
Craig: Her mother?
Clip: When are you going to ask them some questions? When are you going to ask them
Craig: about Samantha?
And the story comes out that this babysitter, her older sister, has been missing. For a long time. And she’s presumed runaway. But the sister says she didn’t run away. She was taken or kidnapped or something. And she’s hysterical. She’s crying. I mean, it’s a really kind of very sad emotional scene. And the cop asks the mom, You know, is this all true?
Yes, it’s all true. And the mom pulls out a picture and says, this is her. This is my daughter. And she shows it to the cops and the cop hands it to Kevin Bacon and his wife and says, do you recognize this girl? And it’s the girl, it’s the ghost girl, but But they say, no, they both say no. And the cop says, do you want to press charges?
And Maggie, the wife says, yes. And Kevin Bain says, no, no, we don’t want to press charges. Let’s just let it go. And he explains to her immediately, you know, they’re just, they round the corner and start going up the stairs and she’s like, what the and he’s like, it was the girl, it was the girl that I saw. So, I mean, it’s pretty clear at this point that this is a haunting.
And this ghost is trying to communicate, but at this point, they know, they know that Jake has something to do with it. That’s their kid. And so as soon as they get home, they sit him down and he’s just playing and like humming to himself. And they’re asking him questions like, who’s Samantha? Do you talk to Samantha?
Where do you talk to her? And he’s only giving vague answers or maybe not really any answers at all. Mommy’s asking you a question, bud. Is Samantha
Clip: someone who talks to you sometimes, Jake? Can you remember any of the things that she Don’t ask the boy any more questions. Talk to me.
Todd: Yes. So creepy. I would have bolted out of the room at that point.
I don’t care if he’s my son.
Craig: I wish that it had gone further. It was just kind of a creepy moment that never happens again, and they don’t even really continue talking to him. The kid just kind of snaps out of it. Yeah.
Todd: And they also kind of let it pass. I don’t know, maybe just cause Kevin Bacon’s already got all this weird stuff going on in his head.
This is just one more thing to add to the pile. So he doesn’t like immediately quarantine his child and strap him to the bed. You know, I don’t know. Like it, it, it was kind of bizarre that they kind of just left that go.
Craig: Yeah. I mean, after all of that, they go to yet another block party where Tom asks those two football dads that he’s met before.
about if they knew anything about a girl named Samantha. And one of the doofy football guys is like, Oh, that R word. I don’t like that word. So I’m not going to say it. I mean, and they, they even kind of call it, but they mean a mentally challenged person. Even one of the main kind of douchey dad after the, that guy says that word more than once, he’s like, come on, don’t say that.
So even in 1999, they knew a little bit better. But, but these guys are kind of like, yeah, we, you know, she was around her, and I chalked it up to
Todd: a runaway or whatever. I’ve got to say, like, by this point in the movie, I was like, I pretty much had it all figured out. I just didn’t know the details.
Craig: See, other people, I, I’ve read online that other people say that it’s predictable.
I, one of the main, uh, Reviews just a viewer review that I read was the like the heading was just goes to show predictable can still be entertaining I don’t remember finding it predictable. In fact, I don’t even remember. I just thought at this point, you know He’s asking around it never occurred to me that I should be paying more attention Like, you know, he’s got a little bit of information.
He’s at this black party with his Neighbors he’s asking around it never occurred to me to think of it beyond that
Todd: the kicker to me Is that we learned in one of the very first scenes of the movie that one of those neighbors is his landlord Yeah, and that was just so obviously broadcast. Yeah, and he just bought the house a year ago or something Yeah that I think You know, by the time I realized there was a ghost in here that the house doesn’t belong to them But it belongs to one of his neighbors something bad happened to this girl.
I’m like, okay. All right something bad happened to the girl and She’s come back to set it right and it happened in that house And so therefore that neighbor is probably involved just didn’t know all the details, you know
Craig: in Kevin Bacon’s flashes I mean everything is very fast, but you get This girl died a violent death, like there’s no question about that, and it seems to have ended with plastic around her head.
You see one of her teeth knocked out, you see then, you know, her face, the teeth are gone. Obviously this girl has died a violent death, we just don’t know the details of what has happened. I guess if you’re thinking about it, It’s got to be within the scope of what we know. You know, it’s not like this is just going to be some random thing.
So maybe I just wasn’t paying close enough attention, but things go on. I think next Kevin Bacon has a dream. One of the neighbors, Harry, I think is in his house and says, I’m going to kill you. And Maggie or something or I’m gonna have to kill you or something like that And the neighbor walks out and when Kevin Bacon follows him out, he’s not there anymore So he just walks down to his house And when he he knocks on the door and somebody says come in and he goes in And that kid’s foot or that guy’s football player’s son is standing in the living room And he says I want to show you something and Kevin Bacon’s like, okay, and he pulls out a gun Kevin Bacon’s like Hey, hey or whatever, and just very abruptly the kid shoots himself, right?
I feel like he shoots himself in the The
Todd: side, not like in the head or anything. It was bizarre.
Craig: Yeah. I’ve never seen anybody do that. It was kind of bizarre. But then Kevin Bacon wakes up, but then it all plays out again in real time.
Todd: Yeah. Well, except for his neighbor visiting.
Craig: Right? The neighbor’s not there.
Right. But he walks out and everything is the same. He doesn’t get there in time to stop the kid from shooting himself. And everybody goes away in an ambulance that, you know, that whole family. And of course his parents are distraught. And then Maggie. To get away from the crime scene, Maggie takes the kid Jacob for a walk and they walk to this cemetery where the kid is just willy nilly talking to ghosts.
I love that. Like, I love that the kid just talks to ghosts randomly. Like, Hey, what’s up? But they also encounter this man who can sense that. Oh, that was
Todd: so weird.
Craig: It, well, it was weird and it doesn’t really go anywhere because the guy says your kid can see or something. I don’t know. And he’s like, can you, and she says no.
And he says, well, maybe. His dad and she says, well, maybe, and he’s like, well, here, you know, give, give your husband this card and tell him to come meet. You know, a lot of us meet in this back alley.
Clip: So
Craig: I don’t really know where this goes except for to kind of convince. Cause she goes to the meeting instead of Kevin Bacon.
And the guy that she met is upset about that, but he’s like, look, your husband’s mind has been opened. He’s going to be open to all of these things. Blah, blah. He has in the meantime, he goes back to Lisa and says, hypnotize me again.
Todd: Yeah. And she does close my mind basically.
Craig: Right. She does, but she’s not in control of it.
You know, she goes through the whole thing again. She says, look at the letters on the screen. They say sleep. But they don’t. They say, dig. And, and she says, no, they say sleep. And he says, no, they say dig. And from that point on, he’s kind of manic.
Todd: He’s like me. He’s like, he’s sort of sorted out what’s going on.
He’s like, I don’t know the details, but there’s a body here. In my house. Somewhere that I’ve gotta find. He’s enlisted his kid.
Craig: I can understand where he’s coming from because I want this resolved. Yeah. You know, like, this is messed up. It’s messing with me. We, we hear, you know, when Maggie talks to Lisa, she’s worried.
She’s like, he hasn’t been to work in the, like, the last nine days. If he, if he doesn’t go back soon. We’re going to lose our insurance. Like there are high stakes and he’s not well. And he’s like frantically, manically digging up the whole backyard and he’s got Jake helping him and stuff. And she’s angry cause she doesn’t understand.
And there’s a great scene where they kind of get in a fight and at the end of the fight to punctuate the fight, he kicks a bucket and it smashes through one of their kitchen windows, which was totally an accident. But he stayed in character and they kept it. It’s a great shot. Oh,
Todd: that’s cool. I didn’t know that.
He’s making so much noise that even the neighbors are noticing. And again, in the back of my head I’m going, Oh, this is not a good thing.
Craig: You know? Well, he starts making the noise when he gets the Jackhammer, but that’s first after immediately after this fight She gets a fax from like her brother or something that says grandma’s getting moved to a different hospital And she tells her husband that she’s like grandma’s getting moved to a different hospital and he goes Oh, no, she and then he cuts himself off And then the phone immediately rings and it’s Maggie’s brother and the grandmother has died and he knew And Maggie knows he knew, but she has to go away for the funeral, and he doesn’t want to go, and she’s pissed, and they have a little marital spat about that, but it gets Maggie and Jake out of there, so that now he can just Run wild.
And he does, he tries digging up the backyard. He’s not finding anything. He goes down to the basement to try to figure out something that’s wrong with the water. Like he can’t get the water to work outside, but while he’s down there, I guess it occurs to him that maybe he should be digging down there and he starts digging in the basement and then like he, he, he tries doing it with a pick, but it’s, it’s concrete.
So he might be able to do it eventually, but it’s going to take a lot of time and effort. So he goes in red. It’s an air powered jackhammer from Menards, and that’s when the neighbor across the street hears him. And not only is he jackhammering, but he is screaming maniacally.
Todd: Yeah, he’s just insane at this point.
But it’s an interesting character thing because this kind of coincides with his continuous complaints about how he’s just a boring person and there’s nothing significant about him or whatever. And which, you know, was something that his sister, you know, the kind of the whole reason he was hypnotized.
was to shut him up about that, but then, you know, he yells at his wife when they’re having that argument. He says, this is the most important thing that’s ever happened to me. I need to see this through. I can’t go. I’ve got to keep digging. And so it all kind of tracks. It probably reads better in a book than it comes across on the screen.
Craig: I don’t think that it’s really an original concept of somebody becoming obsessed with something and kind of losing themselves to it, but
Todd: the burbs. It’s funnier version of this really.
Craig: It kind of feels like Poe, you know, like,
Todd: Oh, for sure.
Craig: The telltale heart or something. He’s got to figure it out and it drives him crazy to figure it out.
But while he’s down there, he accidentally bumps into a wall and part of the wall, it’s like a stone masoned wall and part of the stones fall down and there’s like some brick behind, but I don’t know if this is a flaw in the system. Set, or if it was intentional, I’d like to think it’s intentional. It seems like very loose brick work, which would kind of make sense because they would have been doing in a hurry and, you know, but he’s very quickly able, you know, he spent all this time digging up the backyard and trying to dig up the yard and literally poor guy.
He brushes against the wall and it falls out.
Todd: I know. I thought, Oh, how frustrated would you be? Right. Also. Screw that ghost, for telling me dig. I
Craig: know, that’s not digging! It’s not digging at all. Put a wall, put a wall on the boy. Come on. But anyway, so, you know, he pulls the brick down, he pulls the stone down, he pulls the brick down, and he immediately finds
Todd: Plastic.
Craig: Well, I think it’s the coat first, and we know it’s the girl’s coat, we’ve seen it. And he pulls that off, and it’s plastic underneath, and he cuts it open, and there is a mummified corpse in there.
Todd: With some hair in its hand. Conveniently. What a convenien
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