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67Marvelous not in its evocation of horror but in the way it slowly chips away at the mundanities of day-to-day urban living.
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50Some dazzling in-camera special effects, especially the ingenious idea of filming the story's ghost at a slow speed, six frames per second, giving the being a strange, otherworldly way of moving.
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63Needs less down-to-earth flavor and more unearthly force.
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63A conventionally violent, do-or-die ending on such an unconventional movie.
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70The conventional ghost-appeasement scenario isn't very suspenseful, which may be part of the reason it's so gripping.
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75Kevin Bacon stars in one of his best performances.
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75A horror movie with a Hitchcockian veneer of the everyday, a story that taps into our fear not only of the paranormal but also of insanity and the secret evil that may lie beneath ordinary lives.
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50Director Koepp relies more heavily on editing tricks than old-fashioned atmosphere.
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The scares early on are potent and get Stir of Echoes off to a chilly horror-movie start.
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58Offers tricky fragmentation without mystery or mood; it's a mosaic of fear that grows less and less unsettling as it comes together.
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80It certainly has a place among the year's more accomplished productions.
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70The picture has an appropriately grungy sense of place.
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70The ghost story is not half as satisfying as the lovely indie mood piece tucked inside it about a community tending to itself in the wake of a recent wound.
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What gives the movie its teeth is the very earthy Witzky family, who behave so much like real people you might think they are.
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63A scream-out-loud movie, upsetting and deliriously effective. Problem is, Koepp relies almost entirely on the isolated shocking images, ignoring the human element at the center.
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68Elevates the horror genre with a refreshing intelligence and humor -- too bad it's not half as good at generating scares.
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63Little internal logic and too many signposts. It's easy to see who in the neighborhood knows more than they're letting on, even without X-ray vision or ESP.
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Studded with potent fright scenes and built on a rock-solid performance by the ever-dependable Kevin Bacon.
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60The movie tries too hard. Too bad. This coulda been a contender.
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75The effectively creepy Stir of Echoes, is enough to make your blood chill.
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75"Sixth" achieves a rare hushed poetry where Stir, for all its strengths, is more earthbound and familiar.
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60Compared with ("The Sixth Sense"), there's no contest. Stir of Echoes has been outrun and outclassed.
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100Stir of Echoes is much more down and dirty (than "The Sixth Sense"), and the thrills are more visceral.
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67(Bacon's) most believable, heart-wrenching and charismatic lead performance in many years.
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Another thriller that packs a spooky wallop as it conjures an unseen world within reach.
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50All that suspense falls dead at its climax, which proves to be a bore. The absence of a surprise ending and the lackluster spooks make this one worth skipping. I'm going back to see "The Sixth Sense."
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70A scary, intelligent thriller that remains haunting long after it's over...features what has to be one of the creepiest first half-hours in recent film history.
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75The economical, fast-paced style and creepy mood are reminiscent of "The Twilight Zone."
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80Koepp does a masterful job of grounding his intimations of the supernatural in a totally persuasive down-to-earth context.
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90There's visceral horror, too, including a grisly image -- a horror-in-miniature involving a fingernail -- that located an open nerve in my jaded ability to endure screen violence.