Echoes

Interesting premise, poor execution. Anna Parker (French) is a writer who is at the mercy of sleep paralysis that brings about frightening visions. On the advice of her boyfriend Paul (Brand) she takes a trip to a house in the desert, where her visions become more "frightening." In actuality, there are no scares here, just a series of scenes that move at a tortoise's pace and does nothing to hold the viewer's attention. You'd get more frights from a rerun of "Pee-Wee's Playhouse." This is a Netflix film, and the quality of that service has become mediocre at best, and just think: these are the folks who knocked Blockbuster out of the game.

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

When I saw the trailer for this movie , I thought it looked really creepy and but now I wish I didn't see the trailer before the movie

As I was watching the movie , I felt like already seen half of it as the trailer so most of creepy parts in the movie

however there are some turns in the plot , which did confuse me for a while but in the end most of the movie is very predicable

There are one or two were still tad creepy but those scenes are in the trailer

The acting was okay but there were poor acting in some parts of the movie

After the movie ended, I struggled to reason why I hated it. I loved the first half (the slow mood-setting buildup and thick atmosphere), but once the action started happening, I started getting irritated. The action itself was well paced and unpredictable enough, but the characters' reactions (in particular the bizarre amoral yet judgmental attitude of the main character Anna) were what killed it for me, and I found myself not caring about her or anyone in the story.

For example, Anna commits a heinous act, possibly while under the influence of heavy medication and or supernatural forces. When she realizes what she has done, there's no hint of remorse but instead she immediately shifts into criminal mode, deftly covering her tracks like mob boss, even using sex as a manipulative tool, but then in the next scene she's hypocritically freaking out at her boyfriend for daring to show concern about her pill popping. Also in that scene she does the WORST cliché of a lover's quarrel: she smacks him out of nowhere, and HE apologizes. The film lost about 2 points right there.

The 2nd half of the film is rife with moments like that. She continues doing awful things while treating her boyfriend like he's the villain and she's the victim. Oh throw in a bizarre ghost who was also a horrible person in life but now on a righteous revenge mission, and we have a bona fide amorality tale where we're supposed to sympathize with characters who don't deserve a drop of sympathy.

It's a shame that the characters (mostly Anna) weren't developed more consistently, or at least in a likeable way, because as I said up front, the cinematography and mood setting was masterfully done. The setting was striking as well: set in the gorgeous vast, barren landscape of Joshua Tree in a remote glass house with no curtains. And the story had a ton of promise.

Instead this film is an unfortunate example of how everything can be working for a movie, but if you don't like the characters the whole thing will fall apart.

This could have been a great thriller. The idea of sisters changing lives was a great concept. But the script is poorly written. And the acting of the Leni character was poorly executed. That fake Southern accent was atrocious. And her demure was unconvincing. Half the time I didn't understand the relationship between the characters. I kept saying is that their other sister? Are those two people friends? Did these girls actually grow up in this area because everybody acts like they don't know them very well.

I decided to watch the whole thing to just find out what happened. But it was very painful. Very painful. My recommendation is don't even start it.