‘The Echo’: ‘Sigaw’ adapts well to its new setting

(Published Oct. 25, PDI-Entertainment)

By Oliver M. Pulumbarit

Contributor

Filmmaker Yam Laranas remakes his well-received 2004 horror film “Sigaw,” replicating some atmospheric parts, and evolving scare tactics accordingly.

The universality of tales involving the inexplicable is exemplified in the new version, “The Echo,” set in New York’s East Village. The neighborhood has its own texture and character, and the ghost story easily adapts to its surroundings. The Americanized version works in delivering the scares even if you haven’t seen the original.

The role first portrayed by Richard Gutierrez is modified into a brooding ex-convict, Bobby, played by Jesse Bradford. Shortly after his release, Bobby decides to live in his late mother’s musty, dismal apartment unit, and before long, begins noticing strange and spooky patterns. He starts having nightmares, and discovers a piano with bloody keys, among other things. But what he finds most alarming are the loud arguments next door between a violent cop (Kevin Durand) and his battered wife (Iza Calzado, reprising her old role).

Bradford makes the role his own, and manages to create a layered misfit-outcast character. He’s most vulnerable around ex-girlfriend Alyssa (Amelia Warner), but is believably detached and guarded with almost everyone else. Bobby inevitably helps out his abused neighbors, the mother and daughter trapped in the cycle of abuse.

The abuse angle and its repercussions are things we’ve seen before in “The Grudge,” but “The Echo” manages to infuse the subject with a different sense of immediacy. While domestic abuse is one of the more disturbing horrors of reality, it practically becomes another bogeyman in the film, thanks to the effective portrayals. Also, “The Echo” is able to keep things mysterious, even after some paranormal goings-on are revealed.

Sequences involving victims of the spectral presence can be truly predictable. Still, “The Echo” conjures up its own foreboding and ominous scenarios. The blaring sounds of chaos agitate just as effectively as its quiet scenes of despair and dread.