Sound of My Voice

I could spend 3hrs writing a review on how many holes there are in this movie. The acting is sub-par and the plot is beyond terrible. Do yourself a favour and shove a fork in your eyes before "viewing" this movie it may actually improve it. The bland, jittery visual "realism" can't counteract overheated performances of tin-eared dialogue, which strain for pulp but often land at soap.Holds your attention for a while, but fails to build much suspense as it races toward a predictable climax. It probably would have worked better as a series of Webisodes, which reportedly was the original plan.In the end, the film doesn't add up to much of anything, but its individual parts are sometimes greater than its whole.

This movie was okay. It's not fun or entertaining, but it's interesting and pretty well acted. It really should have been a 45-minute pilot for a series, not a movie twice that long.

The interesting idea could have been explained in a few minutes, so spending so long setting it up seemed overindulgent and a little boring.

It might be worth watching if you like slower movies that focus on acting and ideas, rather than entertainment or events.

I saw Sound of My Voice at its SXSW following its premiere at Sundance. It is a weird little film about a two documentary filmmakers investigating Maggie - a cult leader who claims to have traveled back from the future. It was made on a shoestring budget which can be seen in some of its sound and editing. While the film is a decent first effort by some talented amateur filmmakers, it feels oddly unfinished. The acting is okay, but nothing spectacular. The script is a classic presentation of the one of the oldest of cinematic and literary conflicts between faith and reason. Do you believe that Maggie is a time traveler or is she a fraud? The journey is perhaps more interesting than where it ultimately ends up. The trip to that end is worthwhile and really quite creepy and disturbing at times. Maggie is a perplexing enigma and the cult's beliefs and rituals are quite mind-boggling.

The cult members seem quite willing to believe anything in the existential quest to give their lives some meaning. They seem to want to be led somewhere and Maggie is very willing to take them. In that sense one can ask what the real difference is between a cult and an established religion. Many scholars would say not that much other than how long they've been around. The final twist is ultimately not all that shocking or truly expected. Still, a good first effort that may allow the filmmakers to move on to bigger and better stuff.

I saw this at the 2012 Palm Springs International Film Festival. An LA journalist and his girlfriend Peter (Christopher Denham) as Peter and Nicole Vicius as Lorna go underground to investigate a cult led by a woman who claims she's from the future. Brit Marling stars as Maggie, the mysterious cult leader with Richard Wharton as Klaus, her dedicated right hand man who brings the members and potential members of the the small group of followers to Maggie's home where she conducts meetings in her basement. Zal Batmanglij directs and co-wrote the script with Marling. Nice music from Rostam Batmanglij with a good-looking production value thanks to cinematographer Rachel Morrison and production designer Scott Enge. This was originally conceived as a 10 part webisode which is why the annoying and unexplainable numbers from one to ten keep popping up every few minutes. Fox Searchlight bought this and turned it into a theatrical release where it debuted as a big hit at the Sundance Film Festival last year. This comes across as more like a TV pilot for some Sci-Fi channel series than a movie. Even if a sequel to it were made as a film, it would spend the entire film just trying to explain and fill in the many unanswered story line subplots and backgrounds. Just too many loose ends here to a semi-interesting story that takes you nowhere. Would probably make a good TV series but this as a film fall flat. I would give this a 6.0 out of 10.

Captivating and enigmatic, "Sound of My Voice" shows that you can effectively rack an audience's mind with a micro-budget. While many of the strange details and set-ups are left open ended, it's the kind of film that will you have talking with others trying to fill in the blanks long after you've seen it. In some ways, they plant more details than necessary in what seems to be an attempt to confuse the audience and test their attention.Overall, the actors in the film do a great job (especially Marling) and it proves to be a promising directorial debut for Zal Batmanglij. If you want something that also pulls at the mind emotionally, I would recommend "Another Earth".