The Echo (2008/Image Entertainment Blu-ray)
Picture: B-
Sound: B- Extras: D Film: C
An ex-con (Jesse Bradford) moves into the apartment of his
late mother, running into a bad domestic situation with a cop, his wife and child,
but is being stopped form doing anything about it from his criminal record and
a mysterious force in Yam Laranas’ occasionally watchable The Echo (2008) touted as suspenseful as Co-Writer of The Grudge films Shintaro Shimosawa
co-wrote the screenplay. Sadly, he
co-write it with Eric Bernt, a bad writer who gave us a stupid remake of The Hitcher (2007) and other duds like Surviving The Game, Virtuosity, Romeo Must Die and Highlander:
Endgame. This is almost as bad.
The result is a first-time director failing to cohere two
opposite writing abilities (read somewhat ambitious versus horrible) resulting
in another film that had some potential but is so mishandled that the list of
missed opportunities are better than the final results. Bradford
tries and the cast of mostly unknowns are not bad, but the film can be odd and
screwy in ways that only make things worse.
That only leaves echoes of
better films you’ll have rather been watching than this one.
The 1080p 2.35 X 1 digital High Definition image was shot in
Super 35mm film format, but the cinematography by Director of Photography
Matthew Irving (Waitress) has been too styled down for its own good. Too soft and tampered with, it is not that
good. The DTS-HD MA (Mater Audio)
lossless 5.1 track is also lacking with a lack of good surrounds (save the
fairly good score by Tom Hajdu and Andy Milburn, better known as tomandandy,
whose work includes Mean Creek and The Hills Have Eyes remake) as the
superior codec shows the sonic limits and budget limits of the sound. There are no extras.
- Nicholas Sheffo
