Kevin Bacon's Forgotten 1999 Horror Movie Still Rivals The Sixth Sense

David Koepp's eerie 1999 mid-budget horror, "Stir of Echoes," starring Kevin Bacon, was truly a victim of circumstance. Coming out a few months after M. Night Shyamalan's (whose latest movie was one of the most divisive horrors of 2024) career-defining masterpiece, "The Sixth Sense," was virtually the worst thing that could've happened to it.

Bacon said so himself in a 2017 interview with Entertainment Weekly, "'The Sixth Sense' would have been a hit regardless of when 'Stir of Echoes' came out. We weren't 'The Sixth Sense,' and there was the option to come out before; 'Stir of Echoes' was well-received and testing very high, and well-reviewed, as far as I remember. 'The Sixth Sense' was a phenomenon, so every step of the way we were compared to them, and it completely f***** the possibility of the movie being seen."

"Stir of Echoes" truly felt like a little brother to Shyamalan's horror drama, rivaling it with its tragic ghost story, ghastly scares, and complex human drama. Koepp's film, based on Richard Matheson's 1958 novel, follows Tom Witzky (Bacon), his wife Maggie (Kathryn Erbe), and their young son Jake (Zachary David Cope), in Chicago. At a party, Tom challenges Maggie's sister Lisa (Illeana Douglas) to hypnotize him, as he believes her "paranormal ability" is all humbug and wants to prove that for everyone. He's wrong, and as Lisa opens his mind up, Tom soon begins to see visions of a dead young girl. Later on, he and Maggie also learn that Jake can communicate with the dead, including the girl, Samantha (Jennifer Morrison), whom his father repeatedly sees and hears through hallucinations. She's trying to reveal what led to her present condition, and Tom becomes obsessed with finding the answers so she can finally stop haunting him.

Based on premise alone, you can see many of the similarities between the two movies that made "Stir of Echoes" suffer from being constantly compared to its more popular cousin (for instance, in Hungary, the film ran with the dubbed title "Seventh Sense"). One key difference in Koepp's feature, however, is that it focuses on a particular crime and its investigation that we conduct alongside the protagonist. And to solve it, the movie puts us through a wringer of frightful scares (like one of the scariest horrors did a few years ago) in an unnerving atmosphere dripped in dread and trepidation.

Thanks to a more than competent cast led by an increasingly more obsessed Kevin Bacon, and solid direction by Koepp (despite this being only his second directorial feature), "Stir of Echoes" handsomely delivers on its premise. Unfortunately, that wasn't enough to triumph over Shyamalan's hit at the box office, and "Stir of Echoes" only made a modest $21 million against its $12 million budget (via Box Office Mojo).

Ultimately, it might not be as profound, deep, and gripping as "The Sixth Sense" before it, but it's still a terrific and underseen horror worth remembering, revisiting, or discovering for the first time if you missed out on it back in the '90s. Just remember that despite the resemblance, "Stir of Echoes" didn't steal anything from Shyamalan's film — keeping that in mind, you'll more likely be able to appreciate its numerous strengths.