[The Echo]
Plot:Remake of the filipino horror film "Sigaw" where a young ex-con (Bradford) moves into an old apartment building, and soon learns his neighbor is an abusive police officer who savagely beats his wife and daughter. When the ex-con tries to intervene however, he becomes inflicted with a powerful curse.

Cast:Jesse Bradford, Amelia Warner, Iza Calzado, Louise Linton, Kevin Durand, Carlos Leon.

My Thoughts:Can you hear it?

Review:So when they decided to remake the Filipino horror film "Sigaw" (The Echo), we all thought this would be another asian horror remake or foreign horror remake, on it's way to cinemas in 2009. After all, it was starring the guy from "Bring It On" (Jesse Bradford) in the lead male role. So the chicks would totally score the film atleast 8 million dollars at the box office right? Well, no....they decided to send the film straight to DVD instead. And after seeing it, now, I know why. For one thing, unlike "The Grudge", or "The Ring" (Ju-On and Ringu), which have an established and identifiable ghost like Kayako and Samara, this movie doesn't have one.

It instead attempts to scare the audience with a ghostly recreation of domestic violence. Over, and over, and over again. This all begins when a young ex-con (Bradford), gets out of prison for involuntary manslaughter. He arrives back to his old neighborhood, and finds that most of his old crew have either moved or want nothing to do with him. Yeah, it's pretty hard to fit back into society when you've wasted a guy. Of course there's a whole underlying subplot to the so-called "murder" which is told later on, but which I won't spoil here.

Anyways, he gets a parole officer, and then after that, he returns to his mothers apartment to make it his new digs. His mom died while he was on the inside, but the circumstances surrounding her death were vague and mysterious. The landlord seems to know something about it, but per usual, he's too chicken to talk about it with anyone, especially with her son, once again played by Bradford. Once he moves into his moms place, he tries to put his life back together, and even hooks back up with an old flame after scoring a job at a local autobody shop.

Things seem to be slightly looking up for him, that is until the spirits in an apartment near his begin to act up again. A scenairo which could send him to a similar fate of which his mother tragically met. This movie fails for a number of reasons. Number one, it follows all of those horrible ghost movie cliches. Someone hears a noise, they step out to investigate, noise goes away. They sigh, and go abck inside. Then the process repeats itself a few minutes later.

Then there's the discovery of blood and various strange objects which slowly leads to a ghostly mystery of which we care nothing about because by that time the film, with it's dreadful acting and depressing scenery, has put us into a cinematic coma of boredom and non-interest. And lets not forget about seeing people who aren't really there, and people who follow the ghosts only to end up dead later on, always a classic. There's even one scene where a guy who's safely on the elevator, decides to follow a strange-looking kid into the bowels of the building. I'm pretty sure you can guess what happens to him after that.

This movie seems to do everything which we hated about horror movies 6 years ago, six years too late. Ridiculous character behaviors like this may have been tolerated in 2002, but in 2009? No friggin way! Bradford is also better as a supporting cast member. He cannot lead a film, because his acting while decent, is not really inspiring or interesting to watch. There's no gripping performances from this guy, and when you're the lead character in a ghost film, and are supposed to draw the audience into a supernatural mystery, that is not a good thing to be as wooden of an actor as he is.

I honestly think if the characters were reversed, where Bradford's characters autobody shop boss, or his ex flame were the ones being hassled by the trio of ghosties, this film would've been atleast a few notches better. But to be honest, this movie handicaps itself from the start by not presenting a scary scenario, or a scary supernatural antagonist. The supporting cast of the film is also weak and nonexistent. Beyond the ex flame, and the autobody shop guy, we get the twitchy landlord, and some woman who mumbles to herself while on the elevator.

Charming. And if you're looking for some blood and gore in this movie (ala The Grudge 2), or some freaky scenes (ala The Ring), where eye-popping encounters with the supernatural take place, forget it! "The Echo" has none of that beyond a few scenes of ear-drum bleeding which while if written properly could've been disturbing, instead come off as yawn-worthy more than anything. The films ending is ironic, because the movie ends just as quietly as it began.

This movie is so uninteresting and uneventful, that sometimes...you might forget you even have it in your DVD player and forget it's actually playing on your TV. That's how boring it is. "The Echo" is a film that is NOT better seen, than heard. It's best avoided more than anything.

Positives:The lead female in the movie was modestly good-looking.

Negatives:Boring script, dreary sceneries, bad acting by Bradford and most of the supporting cast except a few people. Lame ghosts, and just a serious lack of overall scares and entertainment value.

Overall:One star out of four.





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