Haunted Echoes (2008)

This movie is the proof that the world is becoming a sick and dumb place

From my favorite movies..

The joyful confection is coated in a sparkly gloss, bright enough to gleam from the darkest, most cynical corners.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

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.

Let me first say, I used to LOVE Sean Young, even after she went a little crazy. I don't know how she got roped into this piece of crap unless she really needed the money. The acting is over the top, the story is awful, the references to animals are horrible... in fact there's a scene I had to turn off because it was so inappropriate to the story and horrible to the cat. (I have to assume what happened because it was well on its way to happening when we changed the channel!!) We couldn't even make it half way through the movie. The writer should be ashamed of himself! There is no reason whatsoever to waste your time on this movie. It will just make you mad.The End!

I was watching this movie with my girlfriend and I honestly thought that this was going to be a scary movie after watching the trailer. But I was thoroughly disappointed with this movie. I mean it was a simple movie with a couple whose daughter was murdered and she attempts to get in contact with her parents and there are is a haunting and stuff that happens. Without being told I could tell that this was a low budget film because the sound was kind of low and the cinematic value wasn't too high. I am a big fan of horror films but this one wasn't for me. Some of the plot holes were really large and there were some things that I was really confused about. Some scenes, I believe, were out of context and somethings did just not connect. Also, I thought it was quite funny because the music DID NOT match the movie at all. It sort of seemed like the music was from a much earlier horror movie like Psycho, it just didn't fit. Honestly, I recommend you see this movie just to see how bad it is. But please don't blow 5 bucks renting it on demand like I did.

I thought that Haunted Echoes was a very good low budget horror film. It is about a couple called Guy and Laura who have recently suffered their worst nightmare,their eight-year-old daughter Kimberly was abducted from her bedroom. not long after they move to a old house which is in need of repair, They hope that it will take their mind off what has happened. but they soon find themselves haunted by a young female spirit who looks like their daughter Kimberly. I thought that this film was very good despite it being a low budget movie, It also had quite a frightening storyline to it. which give it that haunting atmosphere