PLOT: While visiting her sister in an isolated cabin, a woman begins to suspect that they have both inherited paranoid schizophrenia from their mother.
REVIEW: Directed by the duo of Bradley Fowler (who also wrote the screenplay) and Wesley Alley, THE VOICES (WATCH IT HERE) is a film that kept me wondering and guessing where the story was going throughout, and it ended up going in directions that I was not expecting at all. I want to say it's a positive thing that Fowler and Alley were able to surprise me in the way they did, that the movie wasn't what I thought it was for most of the running time, but in this case I'm not sure it was a positive thing – I didn't see where THE VOICES was going because getting there required a leap in logic that I was reluctant to take.
The film stars Amanda Markowitz as Grace, a young woman whose engagement to a guy named David (Brendan Sexton III) has just crumbled because she caught him cheating on her. To recover from the shock of this, and to focus on the school paper she's writing, Grace goes to visit her sister Catherine (Victoria Matlock) at the isolated cabin Cat retreated to after getting divorced and losing her daughter in a custody battle six years earlier. Cat inherited this place from their parents, and the death of one of their parents in particular is important to the overall story. Grace and Catherine's mom suffered from paranoid schizophrenia and committed suicide when the girls were very young.
Grace is writing about paranoid schizophrenia, and she hasn't been at the cabin for long before she begins to suspect that Catherine also has the affliction. In addition to staying up all night to speak to herself in a British accent, Catherine has a tendency to start saying things that make no sense… and this would have been a lot more unnerving if Fowler and Alley had just let these nonsensical lines flow out in the middle of conversations without drawing any extra attention to them. Then we'd be baffled and wondering, "Why did she just say that?" Instead, every time Catherine starts saying something random, the camera tilts and there's an accompanying sting on the soundtrack, like the directors are yelling in the viewer's face, "Isn't what she's saying weird?"
While Grace worries about Catherine, she also starts worrying about herself, because she begins to experience strange things as well; she's plagued by nightmares, and after discovering that she's pregnant she starts seeing a little girl lurking around the house. It's like she's hallucinating the image of her future child, an element that made me think of A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET: THE DREAM CHILD.
The filmmakers were lucky to have Markowitz and Matlock involved with this project, as the actresses were tasked with carrying almost the entire film on their shoulders and both of them did great work in their roles. Other cast members didn't have a whole lot to do; Sexton only has a few minutes of screen time, Juliana Sada is the odd little girl Grace keeps seeing; and Lin Shaye shows up as a "vagabond". Shaye's presence is a major selling point in the marketing for this movie, but she doesn't play a prominent character. She's basically the doomsayer, the Crazy Ralph, and also appears in one of Grace's nightmares. The Vagabond could have been cut completely and it wouldn't make much of an impact, but it is always nice to have Lin Shaye around.
One problem with this movie is that the majority of its overly long 96 minutes focuses on just Grace and Catherine at the cabin, and the scenario starts to get old and repetitious. Grace sleeps, has nightmares, talks to Catherine, eats dinner, goes back to sleep. The character starts to feel a bit stir crazy, and I was feeling stir crazy myself while watching the movie, waiting for something major to happen. Eventually major events do start to occur, building up to one of the most unsatisfying endings I have seen recently.
THE VOICES has some strong acting, but it's not interesting enough to sustain its running time and it ends in disappointment.
Cinedigm is giving the film a VOD release on May 12th.