Voices

A protracted stage play on what looks like low grade videotape bookended by film sequences to remind you what the rest of it should have looked like. Unnaturalistic dialogue that goes absolutely where you expect, delivered with a generous helping of ham. My interest was piqued momentarily when I realised that the child playing John was in the tiger segment of Tales That Witness Madness, and there is a soupçon of guilty curiosity in watching Hemmings and Hunnicutt perform as a bickering couple in the knowledge that their real life marriage was at that time falling apart. Otherwise this is a colossal waste of everyone's time. Move along...

An unsual film. Good first act. Great last act. The middle act, shot on videotape, is essentially one long scene of the two characters arguing, apologizing, and arguing again. It feels very much like a BBC adaption of a stage play, and is relatable but reptetive.

However, stick with it; the scenes of what may be either ghosts or hallucinations become increasingly frightening, leading up to a shocking climax where we find out exactly which they are.

Gayle Hunnicutt's does wonders with her haunted gaze, and the fog-shrouded country house location has a nicely ynderstated atmosphere of isolation and dread.

Comparisons to Don't Look Now are apt; there are also similarities to 2001's The Others.

This movie is quite difficult to locate, which is a shame for horror fans. In the past couple of years, more sophisticated films such as "What Lies Beneath" and "The Sixth Sense" have been giving scary movies a good name. "Voices" is from this class of thriller because it achieves its shocks through the use of story and character interaction, with an ending that leaves you wondering and frightened for days. It is a simple story about a young British couple who want to get away for a short, romantic vacation in a secluded area of rural England. The destination is unfamiliar to both, and the journey there is ripe with dialogue so realistic and ordinary (plain conversation, arguments, reconciliations) that one might initially think "Voices" is an arty, ad-libbed drama as opposed to a horror flick. This mundane aspect is all a ploy to throw the viewer off, however. Once the young lovers find the vacation house, the mood shifts eerily and the sense of something threatening and supernatural surrounds the couple. They become frustrated, confused and hateful towards each other as their romantic weekend slips through their fingers amidst a haunting neither one can identify. The audience are left equally bewildered, because there is no standard, knife-wielding lunatic creeping outside,and there is no demon locked in the cellar. There is merely this sense of accelerating decline in the characters that is fascinating to observe, and we find ourselves needing to know what happened en route that has resulted in this bizarre situation. Ultimately, the final ten minutes of the film answers all of our questions and makes the subtleties we were puzzling over seem more profound...and the couple themselves discover it as we do, with just as much sense of terror.

Submitted by Penny Dreadful, Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Although the other reviewers of Voices seemed to have liked it, I found this stagebound drama to be a bore.

While on a boating vacation, a young boy disappears. He is assumed to have drown. The boy's parents (David Hemmings and Gayle Hunnicutt) were making love when the boy wandered off, so a strong feeling of guilt hangs over the surviving couple. Claire, the mother, eventually has to be committed after trying to kill herself. Just out of the hospital, the husband, Robert, has taken her to country to get away. While in the hospital, Claire inherited a country manor. The house is dusty and a dense fog hovers outside the house. However, the atmosphere is more chilly between the couple, who repeatedly reopen old wounds. Then, there is the matter of the voices that Claire is hearing in the house. Is the house haunted or is her illness back or is there something else going on?

Admittedly, I started watching Voices thinking it was a horror film, which it is not, but I had a hard time finishing the film, in spite of its short running time. Based on a play, Voices is a talkfest where a couple bickers endlessly until there is a surprise ending, and this one does not seem too surprising any more. Admittedly, David Hemmings and Gayle Hunnicutt are both fine and any interest that I had was because of their performances, but, after a while, I just wanted them both to shut up. I will confess to not liking movies (or plays) like this. I did care much for The Pumpkin Eater or Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? either. Viewers with more patience for that type of drama may like Voices more than I did.

Is not enough to redeem it. Not by a long shot.

The Worst Parents In The World(TM) make love on a barge while allowing their little boy to wander off near a busy waterway... guess what happens next. Yep.

A brief estrangement later, the lady is released from a mental hospital to travel with her husband to a creepy mansion far off in the countryside, in the cold and the fog. She's inherited it from her aunt, who... you know what, it doesn't matter.

They eventually get there, and much boring conversation occurs between the traumatised wife and the uncaring hubby, interspersed by many failed attempts at him trying to seduce her and then she hears s-p-o-o-k-y voices in the background (hence the title, doh).

Honestly, you really don't want to watch this. Steer well clear. It's more like a play than a film anyway, with lots of dull dialogue on a single set and only a few outdoor scenes at the beginning and end. A play you'd walk out halfway through and demand your money back, that is.

The actors are both fine with what they're given to work with, although the lady's hysterical behaviour sometimes can be a tad OTT. The supernatural elements don't work at all, with only a brief peek now and then at the cause and when the 'Big Reveal' does eventually arrive, to say it will underwhelm you is to say the protagonists are dead certs for Mother And Father Of The Year.

Yes, I'm still upset about that. How can you leave your little son to toddle off to certain death, just because you fancy a bit of...?!

Anyway, the ending. Yes, if I'd really thought about it, I might've seen it coming... but I didn't and it sorta left an impact. Shame that the rest of the movie didn't compare to this shock denounment in any way, shape or form though... making it comparable to chewing a single mint after imbibing an entire bottle of cod liver oil.

A nice after snack, not nowhere near enough to take the nasty taste away. 3/10.