Haunted Echoes (2008)

Touches You

Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

It's a movie as timely as it is provocative and amazingly, for much of its running time, it is weirdly funny.

Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

Let me tell you a bit about how I knew about this movie before even seeing it in a bargain bin. I have seen the works of Harry Bromley Davenport, an English director who made it big in the early 80's with the video nasty, Xtro (which is a guilty pleasure). Since then he's had ups and downs. His downs include films like Xtro 2 and Smile Pretty yet he has had a few movies where he has demonstrated that he actually can be good when he wants to be. Despite its problems Xtro 3 is a passable little alien horror movie and Mockingbird Don't Sing is one of my favourite movies. So overall I do have a mixed feeling about him in general. So when I saw that this was a film he directed I was shocked (because his films are hard to find in Australia) and I decided "why not?" Now that I've seen it, all I'm asking is "why?"So the movie starts out with a dog barking at something in the dark, a little girl named Kimberly goes out to check on him and gets kidnapped. I know it may be shocking to people that feel that but the parents in this movie don't do a goddamn think when they notice the dog barking...good start already.After searching for a total of 9 days they come across Kimberly as a rotting corpse. The parents, played by Sean Young and David Starzyk, decide to move house because the memories are too painful.But there is one big shock, the house is haunted. So for scares what does this ghost do? Write on the wall while they're doing a paint job, turns on the TV and computer printer and appears as a little girl to a neighbour in the window. Now that last one might be the only legitimate creepy scene...its never shown on screen. The ghost does nothing intimidating at ALL on screen. Not even remotely. I thought the ghost in Grindstone Road was bad but hey, I'll take rattling pipes and water over this any day.So they call in a psychic that I swear to god makes William Shatner look subtle and he informs them the Ghost is Kimberly and shes trying to tell them who killed her. One question, movie, How did Kimberly become a ghost in a house she's never been in before?They find out that the killer is not the guy that was arrested and the person that really did it was a teacher at Kimberly's old school who is a pedophile. Young shares a conversation with him and she just HAPPENS to be on school premises even though her daughter is dead asking questions and has no doubt in her mind after one conversation that he killed her. So this character bases all her "fact" on the word of a psychic she never met before the reading and the "suspect" acting a bit odd. Tell me if you see the same flaw I see.Young and Starzyk wait outside the school to take one of Kimberly's old friends to their house and seduces her with a mystery present in the hopes that they can talk to her about the teacher. My problem with this scene is that in fiction once you cross the line of pedophilia, there is no going back.So the girl is attacked by the Ghost and her mother, surprisingly is never seen in this movie (and we never hear if she's pressing charges for the two of them kidnapping her daughter!) and Sean Young comes to the conclusion that the only way to get justice is to kill the teacher. At this point, no more evidence besides one conversation and the word of a psychic contribute to it. But because the ghost has been calling him up he decides to go over there and settle this and it turns out he did kill a girl, its just his adopted sister who he molested. The ghost fatally wounds him and Starzyk finishes him off in front of the neighbour who tells the police it was self defense and that "in a way it was" the teacher at that point had a knife in his heart and lying on the floor completely unable to fight back. And the movie pretty much stops with a flashback of Kimberly performing at a school choir and the person who was first arrested looking at her in "that way".My biggest problem with this movie is that nothing seems to go right. The writing is beyond pathetic, the story is so clichéd that you've seen it 1000 times before, the acting is beyond atrocious (and considering the people involved in this movie, thats no easy statement to make) everything about this film is inept.The worst thing about this film is that for a movie about a couple that loose their only child, you'd expect at least one of them to have a moment of grief over what happened. There is not ONE scene. They are so content almost all the time that at points, you forget that they even had a child.The other thing thats beyond ineptly performed is that when Sean Young just decides that she'll kill the teacher she sound so adamant that its near psychotic. I got to know almost nothing about these characters that in spite of the fact that they lost a daughter, I'd believe the killer's alibi that the only person he killed was his EVIL sister. The way the movie's played out, thats probably what happened.Overall this is one of those rare movies that I can not find one good thing about it. For me to say that, that says a lot. Avoid this film at all costs.

We rented this through Redbox and it was not worth the $1 we paid. The music was obnoxious and loud, the acting was bad in almost every scene, and it wasn't even remotely close to being a horror/scary movie. Not to mention that at the end when she says they're moving to Aberdeen, Oregon, she's incorrect. There is no such place as Aberdeen, Oregon. It's Aberdeen, Washington.This is one of those movies that you start watching and then you end up doing other things while it plays, like laundry, washing the dog, etc. The only part of the movie worth watching was the very end, and the scenes with M. Emmet Walsh.

I'm not one to comment on movies here on IMDb very often but I very much appreciate reading the opinions of others. Many times this has made me buy or not buy a movie. And let this be one of those comments that makes you NOT buy or rent this movie. I just watched it on TV but missed the first couple of minutes and didn't get the title. And all through the movie I was anxious to get to the credits so I could get on here and comment on it.I sometimes read comments telling about bad acting in movies. And I think people exaggerate, sure not everything is worthy of an Oscar but mostly the acting in movies these days are OK. But this is not the case with Haunted Echoes. And it surprises me with actors that have been around for as long as they have. I think the exception is Barbara Bain, who is good as the crazy old lady. But it's not completely the actors' fault. The script is very bad, some of the lines they have to say! And the camera use and the whole feel of the movie... I was watching this with my girlfriend and she said it looked like a documentary.OK, so it's low-budget, but then I'm thinking it would be better to spend time on another movie. At one point during this movie I pointed out to my girlfriend that not 10 seconds go by without something horribly embarrassing taking place. Be it a bad line, crappy special effect, stupid plot twist or misplaced music.The only two reasons I finished watching this was that it was so bad it was a bit amusing and I had to finish it in order to comment on it.So you are hereby warned; don't waste time or money on this.

HAUNTED ECHOES is a story about a husband and wife whose daughter is abducted one night, after a 10 day search her body is eventually found, several months later the husband and wife move in to an old house, and a series of strange events start to take place.The fact that this film is low budget is obvious once it gets started, but that doesn't mean it didn't have the talent behind it, unlike your big budget fare these days, this film has own way to generate a creepy tone, it isn't very atmospheric, and it doesn't really aim to make you jump out of your seat, it concentrates more on setting the right mood, which it manages very well.The script itself is very well written, it develops the characters of the husband and wife well enough for you to relate to their situation, and everything they do and how they react to certain things all make sense.In case you might feel you won't enjoy this film because it is low budget, here's a few things to take into account, it is directed by Harry Bromley Davenport, who was known for directing an early 80's sci-fi movie called XTRO that later spawned two sequels, and stars Sean Young, David Starzyk and E. Emmet Walsh, who give believable performances and are not exactly unfamiliar faces.Overall, if you're looking for artistic aspirations, you probably won't find it here, but if want creative film making skill or creative talent you'll find plenty.