In 1999, Hollywood released several incredible horror movies, and two of them have gone down in history as the most influential in genre history. The year saw the release of a brilliant Japanese horror thriller by Takashi Miike called Audition. The incredible fun shark movie Deep Blue Sea came out, and the even better giant alligator movie Lake Placid one-upped that. The two most important horror movies were The Blair Witch Project in July 1999, a movie that launched the found footage subgenre, and The Sixth Sense in August, the movie that made M. Night Shyamalan a star.
However, after those two movies were released, an underrated horror masterpiece came out called Stir of Echoes. The Blair Witch Project, The Sixth Sense, and Stir of Echoes were in theaters at the same time, and while the two earlier movies remain highly regarded, Stir of Echoes was better than either of them.
It seems almost amazing looking back at 1999 and its slate of horror movies. At the top of most people’s lists is The Blair Witch Project. Before this release, found footage movies were mostly a small part of the mockumentary subgenre, but with this specific release, found footage ended up rising to the top and becoming one of the most prevalent horror subgenres for much of the next two decades. Made for well under $1 million, the movie made $248.6 million at the box office and was one of the most profitable movies of all time.
The Sixth Sense is held to a similarly high standard. While this was M. Night Shyamalan’s third movie, it was his breakout feature film. Starring Bruce Willis and Haley Joel Osment, the movie follows a child psychologist who takes on a patient who says he can see dead people. The twist in this movie set up a career where Shyamalan began to see his films judged by their various twists. However, while this took on a negative connotation, The Sixth Sense was the best of them all. It made $672.8 million on a $40 million budget.
Compared to those juggernauts, and possibly because of those movies’ high box office totals, Stir of Echoes fell short at the box office. However, what it lacked in earnings, it more than made up for in atmosphere, with a story that outshines both of 1999’s bigger movie releases.
Directed by David Koepp, Stir of Echoes is based on the 1958 novel A Stir of Echoes by Richard Matheson (I Am Legend). Kevin Bacon stars as Tom Witzky, a man living in a working-class neighborhood with his pregnant wife Maggie (Kathryn Erbe) and son Jake. While at a neighbor’s party, Maggie’s sister, Lisa (Illeana Douglas), puts Tom under hypnosis. However, when he goes home, Tom realizes that the hypnosis has opened the door to another world where a young ghostly woman starts to haunt his life. To make it worse, Jake can see her as well, and Tom has to figure out what is wrong before it destroys his family.
Unlike The Blair Witch Project and The Sixth Sense, Stir of Echoes succeeds without needing a gimmick. What made The Blair Witch Project so successful was the marketing as much as the movie itself. The production made it sound like this was a true story and the footage was authentic, which made many moviegoers in 1999 wonder if it was real or not. What made The Sixth Sense so successful was a great story and wonderful acting, but all made even bigger by the shocking twist that made people want to return to the theater to see it over again to catch all the clues Shyamalan added to the story.
Stir of Echoes just presented a masterful horror mystery where the plot of discovering the identity of a killer was what drove the story. However, with The Sixth Sense, The Blair Witch Project, and The Mummy dominating the year for horror-adjacent movies, it seems that by September, fans were tiring of the genre. That is disappointing because it was a movie that deserved a much bigger audience. It was a box office success, making $23.1 million on a $12 million budget. The movie also has a matching 70% Rotten Tomatoes score from the critics and the audience.
Stir of Echoes received a sequel in 2007 called Stir of Echoes: The Homecoming starring Rob Lowe, but that movie is best skipped. It had nothing to do with Stir of Echoes outside of using its name, and it just hurt its reputation. However, when taken on its own, Stir of Echoes is one of the best horror movies of the 1990s, and it is better than all of the horror movies that came out that same year, despite the box office numbers.
