Echoes (2014)

Struggling with horrifying, sleep-paralysis induced visions, a young writer retreats with her boyfriend to an isolated desert house. As the visions intensify, she finds herself on the verge... See full summary »

Director:

Nils Timm

Writer:

Nils Timm

Stars:

Kate French, Steven Brand, Steve Hanks

4 wins & 11 nominations.

Cast

Cast overview:
Kate French	...	Anna Parker
Steven Brand	...	Paul Wagner
Steve Hanks	...	Jeremy
Billy Wirth	...	Joe
Caroline Whitney Smith	...	Vera Palm / Ghost
Kevin Brewerton	...	Cop
Nicolas Charles	...	Bartender / Runner (as Nicholas Charles)
Ivory Dortch	...	Emily
Tina Huang	...	Sleep Paralysis Victim
Stacey Souther	...	Man's Voice
Oxley

Storyline

Struggling with horrifying, sleep-paralysis induced visions, a young writer retreats with her boyfriend to an isolated desert house. As the visions intensify, she finds herself on the verge of losing her mind...or uncovering a life-threatening secret.

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Genres:

Drama | Horror | Thriller

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Certificate:

Not Rated

Details

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Release Date:

18 May 2015 (Sweden)

Also Known As:

Paranormal Resurrection - Die Schatten der Ex

Filming Locations:

Joshua Tree, California, USA

Company Credits

Production Co:

FatFree Films

Technical Specs

Runtime:

93 min

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

This was the first horror movie written and directed by Nils Timm.

User Reviews

A troubled writer gets tangled up with a homicidal wendigo in this bizarre, strikingly filmed chiller.

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.