Echoes of Innocence (2005)

Brilliant and touching

There's a more than satisfactory amount of boom-boom in the movie's trim running time.

It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

Let's be clear on something from the start: this is not a "great" film, not something that is or deserves to be in the canon. Technically speaking, it is fairly amateurish, although for an early low-budget independent effort this crew is fairly competent and I would be happy to see them succeed. The cast is mostly bearable, and big kudos for using actors that actually looked like teenagers in a high school."Echoes of Innocence" is not a typical teenage flick along the lines of "Clueless," "10 Things I Hate About You," etc. ad infinitum, and be grateful for that. Our 17-year-old protagonist is a Goth girl saving herself for marriage and nursing an obsession with Jesus Christ, the Virgin Mary and St. Joan of Arc. Most people call her "Virge," but she has the self-esteem to take it in stride and so we are spared some of the more agonising scenes of teenage angst.On the other hand, that is part of the problem. This movie touches on but fails to explore the depth that seems to be underlying these characters and ultimately fails to weave religious and moral struggles into the fabric in a meaningful way. Sarah is an interesting character: she's not a Catholic but she has visions, she recites the prayers, she appears to study the Faith, she apparently believes in the Sacraments (attempting to take Confession, Absolution and Penance) and seeks the counsel of a Catholic priest. So why had she not she attempted conversion? We never get any hint, and so we are never really drawn into her personal journey.But this is just one example of the film failing to draw out its potential. So many of the characters look like they could be more than stereotypes and our suspicions are just never confirmed. I wonder if perhaps this story reflects an obsession on the part of the scriptwriter and a literary immaturity that hampers its full expression. (I also suspect part of the problem is that this film fails to conceive of the world outside teenybopper suburban America, which is definitely not--proliferation of Young Life ministries aside--a good breeding ground for a deep Faith or culture.) As for the ending... ugh, the completely cheesy and pointless villain sub-plot, the Deux ex Machina.Kudos for attempting to be uplifting, but shame for taking good, solid literary elements and totally smashing them on the floor. This isn't bad if you've got an extra evening off and want to make it a popcorn-and-Pepsi night, but if you're looking for a good Christian-themed film about the struggle of Faith of a young person who's actually a real human being, you're definitely better off looking at Robert Bresson's "Le journal d'un Curé de campagne"--just be warned that if you're the type who goes for cheap thrillers like "Echoes of Innocence," you'll find the former far too slow for your tastes.

Clearly a lot of care went into making this. Technical credits are solid, and most of the acting is at least competent. However, the script is a mess, and the editing is downright incompetent. Each character is a walking cliché that can be described with one adjective. The ending is simultaneously ludicrous and painfully obvious. While much of what occurs on screen is more than a little silly, the tone is uniformly somber throughout. There is almost no dialogue between the two lead characters, but we are treated to TWO lengthy montage sequences of them in "deep meaningful conversation." Yet we are supposed to believe that they are soulmates. There is NO insight into the lives of teenagers, and no serious or reflective discussion of faith. Mysteries (of the mundane rather than the spiritual variety) are brought up and then never explained. The sneering no-dimensional villain is taken out by a deus ex machina that's a cow.There is no sense of artistry or style. The music is repetitive and swells overdramatically even when nothing much is going on. Transitions are abrupt and jarring. Every time the film starts to get going, with a scene that's genuinely unnerving or beautiful or somewhat authentic, the moment is killed by a cut into numbingly clunky, meandering, and/or unaffecting drivel. And then there's the very last scene, which looks like something out of a soft core porn film.What kills me is that they had the material here to make a daring and original Christian film. Really deal with teenage alienation, moral choices and their consequences, the power of faith and love to save us from the very real darkness that inhabits everyday life ... but it's just not here.

This abomination of a movie is the worse thing I've ever seen. While most movies strive for being the best, this movie strives for being the worst. Slow, dull, stupid, imagine those stupid 80's after school specials on PBS only 100 times worse. This movie starts out with a little girl being picked on at school and some little boy befriending her. They play and dance and then the little boy gives her a medallion and swears total allegiance to love her and her alone and makes the girl swear the same oath and says that they will get married on her 18th birthday, then mysteriously in the middle of the night the boy climbs up a tree in front of the girls bedroom window and shouts out to her that he has to leave and forces her to reaffirm her love for him. The movie then flashes forward 5 years but it seems like a lot later since now the girl is 17 and before it looked like she was around 8 or so. Now the girl is a bitter goth type girl that is really into religion and now hears voices and sees visions and compares herself to a modern day Joan of Arc, After fidgeting in your seat and feeling sorry for your money that you blew on this sorry piece of crap, thinking about how you can save gas by doing all your errands together. shopping, post office, checking out the hot nerdy chicks with glasses at the library, this movie is SO incredibly bad it makes "Alone in the Dark" or any other truly horribly bad movie look like "Citizen Kane" or "The Godfather". stay away at all costs.

Wow, where to begin. So I headed into this movie unsure of what to expect, and nothing could've prepared me for the immense pain that soon followed. The first and last ten minutes are a good chuckle, because of the complete awfulness of it all. The acting is the worst i've seen, the directing is just flat out terrible, and this is probably the worst film making ever. The story is so ridiculous in every way, if i were beaten with a stick and forcefully fed LSD i could've still written a better story. SPOILER The ending changes from being an abstinence moralled movie to, them getting married, (both being abstinent), then having sex on their wedding night and somehow, don't ask me how because it baffles me, they still...end up in hell END SPOILER So near the end of the movie I took a pen out of my pocket, and shoved it into my chest. Why? Because if I were going to be in that much pain, I wanted to do it myself.