Review - Stir of Echoes: The Homecoming

Stir of Echoes: The Homecoming – not so bad for a SciFi Original Film . . .

. . . However; not so great as a follow up to the original Stir of Echoes.

Probably the only tie ins to the original were the fact that a creepy Jake Witzky (Zachary Bennett) years after his Dad’s own brush with the dead, is back as a kind of a mentor to the newly aware. Also, the whole drinking a lot thing – although not orange juice as was Kevin Bacon’s drink of choice. I guess the “someone close to you having done something very wrong” and the whole seeing dead people thing was a tie in as well but that was it . . .

So in this film Ted Cogan (Rob Lowe) comes home from a very tough tour in Iraq where he felt responsible for the killing of some civilians and a few of his fellow soldiers because he was unable to get his job done. While dealing with his guilt he begins to see the dead. He thinks that the person he is seeing has to do with the incident in Iraq but come to find out it has more to do with the war at home than anything else.

Much like the original Stir of Echoes there is something that Cogan must do in order to appease the dead. And he better figure it out quick or else his whole family may pay the price. The whole scenario really just didn’t make much sense to me. I mean how did Cogan even get his ability to see the dead - was it just because he might have had a near death experience? He was in a coma for a couple of weeks so I guess that could have been it. It wasn’t explained quite as well as the original film but even when you do get the fact that “oh he is seeing the dead and not just having flashbacks to his war days” you still don’t know where this dead person is coming from. In fact, at first you think it is one of dead from Iraq.

And I suppose that was supposed to be some kind of twist. Not such a great gimmick if you ask me.

Lack of character development and plot, some pretty bad acting and just not such a great story make for not such a great movie experience for me. I guess I liked Stir of Echoes: The Homecoming even less than I had originally thought.

I don’t think I would really recommend that you see this one but if you happen to catch it on SciFi and there is nothing better on then it’s not a TOTAL waste of time.

Directed by
Ernie Barbarash

Writing credits
(WGA)
Ernie Barbarash (written by)

Cast (in alphabetical order)
Zachary Bennett ... Jake Witzky
Nicholas Carella ... Kablinsky
Katya Gardner ... April
Greer Kent ... Hospital Administrator
Grace Lynn Kung ... Nurse Friendly
Pj Lazic ... Nunez
Ben Lewis ... Max Logan
Rob Lowe ... Ted Cogan
Tatiana Maslany ... Sammi
Marnie McPhail ... Molly Cogan
Jason Mercury ... Translator
Kim Roberts
Shawn Roberts ... Luke
Vik Sahay ... Farzan
Krista Sutton ... Tessa
Colin Williams ... Drexel