Review by Tristan Bishop
Do you remember the J-horror boom of the early noughties? My first experience was The Ring, on an Asian VCD purchased in London’s Chinatown after reading about the buzz it (and the subsequent sequels) were generating in Japan. This was sometime in 2000 – by then the film had been out in its native country for two years (we were pretty slow to catch on in the West), but thankfully this meant I could then binge on a succession of films inspired by the success of Hideo Nakata’s smash hit. The initial impact of these films can’t be dismissed – the likes of Ju-On and Dark Water (my personal favourite) eschewing both the extreme gore of previous Japanese horror cinema and the done-to-death ‘smart’ teen slasher films from the US in favour of slow-burning supernatural creepiness. They were a breath of fresh air that the genre desperately needed. Of course all great success must be replicated and copied until all we are left with is faded celluloid facsimiles, and by 2007 the genre reached its conceptual nadir with the release of Exte, a film about, I shit you not, haunted hair extensions.
But J-horror wasn’t exactly gone forever. Instead it went travelling to the USA, changed its identity and ended up making a pile of money by heavily influencing the current wave of big budget ghost stories – The Woman In Black (2012) and Sinister (2012) are both good examples of the J-horror ethos writ big, making a pile of cash and no doubt about to influence the next five years of horror cinema themselves.
The interesting thing about The Echo is, on first viewing, I imagined it to be a film knocked out in the shadow of the big budget ghost boom. But it isn’t. It’s from 2008 for one thing, and only just making its UK debut – which in itself would be cause for concern. It is also, it transpires, a remake of a 2004 Filipino film called Sigaw, which I am ashamed to say I had never heard of (although it was apparently a box office smash in its home country). And it is a remake which is also by the director of the original (one Yam Laranas). Keeping up? Well done.
Bobby, played by Jesse Bradford (of Swimfan fame!) has been released from prison, and moves back to his late mother’s apartment in New York’s East Village. He attempts to rebuild his former life but everywhere he looks his former friends no longer want anything to do with him. He manages to find a job at a garage which employs ex-cons, and looks up an old girlfriend, Alyssa (played by Amelia Warner), which doesn’t go all that well at first. However, Bobby is nothing but persistent, and Alyssa, it transpires, feels some guilt about his incarceration (I’m not going to spoiler this as it gets treated as a big reveal later in the film, although not to any great effect to be honest).
Of course there are more sinister things going on, and no sooner than Bobby starts hearing strange noises and finding bloodstains in the apartment, he discovers that, prior to her death, his mother began to lock herself in her apartment for weeks on end. He soon starts to seemingly hallucinate crying women outside the apartment, and things start to build to a head when he overhears his neighbour, a police officer, being abusive to his family. Eventually Bobby will need to confront whatever demons are at play – but are they real or in his mind?
The first problem with The Echo is one of over familiarity. Anyone who has seen a few of the J-horror pics mentioned above will find nothing new here. I personally guessed at the course of the film around twenty minutes in. The second problem is the acting. Bradford is, well, exceedingly average at best (and looks remarkably like a younger Matthew Fox from Lost), and aside from Kevin Durand (a familiar face from such fare as Wolverine, Real Steel and, oddly enough, Lost!), who is badly underused in his role as the sinister cop, turns out to be the best actor here. They aren’t given a heck of a lot to do with a by-the-numbers script, either, which lacks decent characterisation or believable dialogue.
What is to enjoy is the slick direction of Laranas, who ensures the film at the very least looks like it cost a lot more than the $5 million budget (as estimated on a certain film database, anyway) and he and cinematographer Matthew Irving (who also shot Quarantine 2 and Dolph Lundgren-starrer Stash House) pull off some very pleasing set-ups and camera movements – I was even reminded of Mario Bava at a couple of moments in the way which the camera tells the story far more impressively than the perfunctory script. I can’t deny a couple of creepy moments earlier on too, although by the time we understand exactly what is going on any tension has been replaced by tedium.
I can see why The Echo has only now been released – the ghost story boom is at its height, with Dark Skies currently in cinemas, Insidious part 2 around the corner, and any number of Paranormal Activity films defying logic by smashing the box office again and again, but do yourself a favour and don’t bother with this one. It really is very dull.
The Echo is out now on Region 2 DVD from Metrodome.