A Bloody Good Time: ABGT Face-Off – The Sixth Sense vs. Stir of Echoes

Opening Logo courtesy of Benjamin J. Colón (Soul Exodus)

Next year will be the 20th anniversary of two films that came out in the same year with similar subject matter. That’s a common theme with these face-offs, only in this case one of them was vastly more successful. The Sixth Sense opened on August 6, 1999 and you probably already know how successful it was. It brought in $672.8 million worldwide on a budget of $40, got nominated for Best Picture at the Academy Awards. It also made M. Night Shyamalan a household name overnight, with one magazine notably calling him the next Spielberg. That, of course, didn’t happen. Luckily he’s managed to rehab his name with smaller-budgeted but decent horror films like The Visit and Split.

Meanwhile, Stir of Echoes opened a month later (Sepetember 10) and despite being based on a book from 1958, it coincidentally had a similar plot to Sixth Sense. The end result was a less-than-stellar run at the box office before it quickly faded away. I don’t even remember hearing about it until it got a home video push, which is where I saw it. Once it hit video, it managed to develop a cult following and even led to a sequel nearly a decade later. Now it’s highly-regarded among horror fans.

So that begs the question: which one is better? Is it the blockbuster or the cult favorite? That’s what the Face-Off is for!

Round One: The Story

This is going to be tough to call because again, the stories are similar. Both involve a psychic that has visions of the dead, both have a spooky kid, both have some pretty creepy ghosts. Okay, let’s try to differentiate them.

The story of The Sixth Sense is that the little kid sees dead people and it’s really messing him up. So he gets sent to a child psychiatrist who seems to be helping him out, only for the end to, well, you should know the end by know. Bruce Willis was a ghost the whole time, but manages to find resolution and move on. Cole, meanwhile, learns to live with his powers and even tells his mom about them. It’s actually kind of heartwarming, all things considered.

Stir of Echoes finds a man who gets his psychic powers unlocked after hypnosis, and he starts to see a lot of crazy things. This eventually leads to him losing his mind a little bit and putting the pieces together to solve her murder. It’s not nearly as heartwarming. It ends with a lot of people dying but the girl’s spirit is finally put to rest.

So yes, similar if not identical stories, but I have to give it to Echoes. For one, it’s a more horrific tale, which is what we look for in this column. But more importantly, it’s based on a book by Richard Matheson, and Richard Matheson is a much better writer than M. Night Shyamalan.

Winner: Stir of Echoes (1-0)

Round Two: The Kid

Both movies feature a spooky kid that can see/hear dead people, as I said above.

With Echoes, Artisan really tried to hammer that fact home to get some people who may have thought this was a sequel or something to the Shyamalan movie. The kid in question is Jake, played by Zachary David Cope. He’s actually not as important to the plot as advertising may have had you believe. He shows up for a few scenes and there is some story elements about him, but this is Kevin Bacon’s movie through and through. He’s just kind of there to be a kid.

Of course, it’s different in The Sixth Sense, where Haley Joel Osment’s Cole Sear (do you get it? Sear? Seer?) is the star of the show. It was a breakout performance for him and led to him becoming the next big child star in Hollywood. His performance is also pretty good and he does a good job of carrying his scenes when he has to. Since most of the scary stuff happens with him on screen, that’s a good thing.

This one is going to The Sixth Sense, because obviously. Echoes‘ kid didn’t have a lot ot do with the overall story and Cole was the story in his movie. Well, one of them.

Winner: The Sixth Sense

https://youtu.be/QUYKSWQmkrg

Round Three: The Lead

In this case we have a battle of two heavyweights: Bruce Willis vs. Kevin Bacon. Both aren’t as famous as they used to be, although at least Bacon is still doing a lot of quality work. Willis has been phoning it in for a decade. But anyway, this is about their performances and roles in these movies.

Willis is kind of playing against type in his movie, as a kindly child psychiatrist that may have some marriage issues but is, for the most part, a good guy. He has a lot of the story revolve around him, particularly the twist ending. I thought Willis was good here, as they needed a solid lead to carry things and he’s it. He also has a decent time acting with Osment, which really helps their scenes together. He’s particularly good in the opening scene with Donnie Wahlberg.

Kevin Bacon, meanwhile, turns out one of his best performances ever. His character goes through a lot of stuff in this movie, eventually downing entire cartons of orange juice while he digs a massive hole in the backyard. Since no one believes him at first, it’s pretty much all Bacon during the scary stuff and he does a great job of showing how it’s weighing on him psychologically. It’s honestly one of my favorite roles of his career, and I realize how long and extensive that is. But I’m someone who thinks that Bacon is still underrated, as most people tend to look at his quantity of work rather than quality.

In case you didn’t figure it out, I’m giving it to Bacon here. Willis is the bigger star and he does well in his role, but Bacon has a juicier part and makes the most of it.

Winner: Stir of Echoes

Round Four: The scares

While one film is certainly a lot darker than the other, both of them have quite a few good, scary moments.

In the Sixth Sense, I think it really comes down to two moments. There’s Mischa Barton vomiting weird stuff in the tent and then another scene where a teen ghost is revealed to have a huge gaping gunshot wound in his head. Both are very effective jump scares and if you haven’t seen the film in a while, may still get you. Overall, however, the movie is not outright horror. Now it’s definitely in the horror genre, but it plays more like a drama with horror elements. It stops being scary once Cole learns to accept his gift.

Echoes has the benefit here of being a much darker film. Kevin Bacon seems to go through the ringer in it, and we get to see the crazy stuff he sees. They really play with the visual aspects here as he hallucinates quite a bit. We also have some more realistic horror thanks to the sick people who committed the murder. While there’s not a really iconic scare in the way of Sixth Sense, it manages to keep a steady flow of tension throughout.

You know me, I’m a fan of suspense over jump scares. While the scares in Sixth Sense are famous and more memorable, Echoes is more consistent and leaves me feeling uneasy.

Winner: Stir of Echoes

Round Five: Overall Quality

You would think, given the lead-up to round five, that Stir of Echoes has it in the bag. But I mean, The Sixth Sense is still a great film. It has a pretty good cast, it has Shyamalan before he lost his mind, and it’s obviously the more famous and successful of the two. After all, it was nominated for 56 total awards and won 16 of them. It entered the pop culture consciousness in the late 90s and stayed there for quite a while. It kept Shyamalan working on big budget features long after he stopped producing results.

But does that mean it’s the better film?

That’s really up to you to decide in our poll. As for me, I enjoy Stir of Echoes more. Not because it’s the underdog here, but because it’s a horrific tale with great performances and some unnerving moments. That’s not to say that Sixth Sense doesn’t totally hold up, because it does. It’s still really good even if you do know the twist. But this is all about my personal preference and I’ve gotta go with Echoes.

Winner: Stir of Echoes

So yeah, I give it to Echoes 4-1. It’s a blowout, but let me be clear: They’re both really good movies that you should go out of your way to see. Just see Echoes first, is all I’m saying. If you disagree, and I suspect there will be people who do, let me know in the poll.

Ending Notes:

That’s it for me. Leave some comments here, on my Twitter or my Facebook.

Closing Logo courtesy of Kyle Morton (get your own custom artwork and commissions at his Etsy account)

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