Really Surprised!

Lack of good storyline.

A Brilliant Conflict

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

Yes if you have seen the odd horror movie you probably can guess where this is going early on. Still it's overall decent and has a very beautiful main actress in Kate French. She may not have the chops to elevate anything in this movie (no pun intended), but at least you won't mind looking at her.Even when she goes mental or at least starts seeing things. It takes a while for the movie to actually get into gear and there is no nudity (in case that's what you're looking for), the shock moments are OK and there is a small appearance of a former "Lost Boy" that is a nice touch, even if it's almost too short to count. I've seen worse, but I've also seen way better

Scenic Joshua tree locations and modern architecture accent Echoes, a stylish supernatural thriller. In yet the latest horror happening featuring, what else, a writer summoning up the occult, independent filmmaker Nils Trim blends stalker elements with phantasmagoria and tribal mythology in this Southwest supernatural whodunit. In it, Anna (Kate French) is an aspiring writer who suffers from a few minor, common psychological issues, such as partially waking from chronic nightmares only to experience ghastly hallucinations while trapped in a state of sleep paralysis. OK, maybe that's not so minor or common. But heavily medicated Anna has a solution that she thinks will provide good therapy for her condition: spend several days alone, mostly in her underwear, at her boyfriend's curtain-less glass house, It's OK, nobody will see her and fixate upon her -the only other person around for miles is a shadowy, lurking, unshaven man with no fixed address or US citizenship, who's squatting in a decaying trailer a few hundred meters away. There will be plenty of peace and quiet. too. This plot of land, renowned for the perplexing, fatal disappearance of its previous owner, is so isolated from civilization, there's not even any cell phone reception. Makes sense.What could possibly go wrong with this idea?Well, plenty as it turns out, when Anna promptly runs afoul of an apparent wendigo -a particularly malignant one -who fixates upon and sets out to possess her. Plenty of strange occurrences ensue, some of which demand that we accept characters' unlikely choices, and forgive lengthy exposition at the end revealing a complex and melodramatically sensational back-story explanation. But then this is horror, and horror tales and movies often require that we accept melodramatically sensational back-stories, because if we insist upon being too logically demanding and analytic, we might reject the ideas of monsters and ghosts altogether. So we shall allow Echoes to take its artistic license with the credible, we will enjoy its unusual twists and unpredictable, if not illogical turns, because in addition to having some tense moments which are really scary (an increasingly rare commodity in horror movies), Echoes showcases arresting locations and surreal dream sequences emphasized by striking cinematography. Viewers may recognize actor Steven Brand, who plays Ana's boyfriend, from The Scorpion King, and the HBO series The Mind of the Married Man, and Kate French from horror movies Sutures and Channeling. Perhaps the most interesting cast members in Echoes however are cute Oxley, the dog who plays Ana's canine companion "Shadow," with almost human expressiveness, and in a sense, the boyfriend's modernist glass house itself, which features prominently in the film and bears a strong resemblance to the historic Stahl House, a Los Angeles landmark used as a location in numerous films, photo-shoots and ads.

I can handle slow films. But even if a film is slow, it's got to have something interesting to keep you engaged. Echoes barely had any of it. There was nothing surprising about the story. A ghostly spirit takes a golden opportunity of using a woman's sleep paralysis problem to hijack her body to well, get revenge on her husband who killed her. That's really it. It does get suspenseful during the first half but by the time the film is going to be over, it's just exposition after exposition. Again, Echoes offered nothing new and spectacular to horror. However, on the bright side, I was quite impressed with the quality of the cinematography and the movie was filmed at some beautiful locations in the California desert. The acting was fairly decent and a minimal cast is always great too.5/10

Writer with mental problems alone in an isolated house. Things go bump in the night and a dark secret is slowly revealed.Solid story that builds creepiness, then turns promisingly weird at 45 mins. But it falls into the class of psychological thriller using ghosts to beef up the tension.The acting is good, but the heroine is a dull character. Insomnia, alcohol dependency, sleep paralysis, prescription pills - something seriously wrong with her, but the screenplay shows no quirks, flamboyance, humour. Flat effect, and the dialogue really doesn't help.In the end her character has nothing to do with it - she was just an accidental conduit. And yet she has the blood of two innocent men on her hands - who cares? The pace and music are good, but the final sequence is hectic - like they're trying to rush the unsatisfying ending off the stage. And of course another plot that gets the implausible cops-will-be-here-any-minute treatment - always a sign of weak story-telling.Overall, good build up but it missed the chance to go full ghost and deliver on the weirdness. Make the heroine the villain and you have good horror.