Stir of Echoes

I still haven't gotten over the trauma brought on by "the full Bacon" in Wild Things, but I heard that Kevin did a good job in this one, even though the movie is useless for the Bacon game. So I shelled out the full price and went to an 8pm showing with the wife, knowing that I'd be going to work at 11:30. I think she slept an hour or so while I was gone.
The story is about a guy with a good deal of resentment towards what the state of his life is who is skeptical about everything. At a party, he dares a friend to hypnotize him and wakes up later feeling strange. As it turns out, he begins to see the image of a teenage girl who disappeared and gets graphic flashes of the final minutes of her life. Freaked out by it, he stays home from work to get his head together and discovers his son sees her, too. In order to purge the visions from his mind, he realizes he must find the girl (or her body) to finally get some peace. The ending is a little bit of a whudunnit with some action shots, ending... happily?
If you are at all queasy, or graphic images disturb you (or someone you're dragging to the movie and will have to stay up all night with), avoid this movie. I'm usually pretty good about violence, but I winced more than once; some of the things that were shown just didn't need screen time. Bacon did do OK, but not well enough to deserve the hype some people were giving it. The supporting cast would have done better if the script hadn't been so transparent, and the kid star of this doesn't hold a candle to his rival, Osment (who was in Sixth Sense.
I liked the movie but wasn't impressed overall. I would recommend this as a matinee, not just for reduced admission but so you can purge some of the images from your mind. Not a must-see.

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