Voces - Die Stimmen

The plot: after a family moves in to an old house, the parents become concerned that their son is hearing voices.

Haunted house movies tend to be pretty cliched. You have to really like the formula to sit through most of them. It helps if you shake things up by watching the occasional non-English film. But, even so, you frequently end up feeling like you've already seen that movie a few times already.

"Don't Listen" doesn't stray from the template used by so many other haunted house movies. There's the standard bit of exposition about why the family can't leave the house. And, of course, someone finds a book that explains the movie's plot in detail.

However, quite a few of the scenes were well-acted, and the characters were all pretty likable. Each of the characters got to have their own spooky moment, where they sloooowly reach toward something they probably shouldn't be reaching toward. Then there's a sudden, loud noise, and the character sloooowly backs up, not realizing that there's something spooky behind them. If you can handle such cliched scenes, it's actually done pretty well.

Near the end of the movie, everything is explicitly and tidily resolved. There is absolutely no metaphor here, and there is literally no chance that you walk away from this movie scratching your head. It left me wondering if maybe this was meant for a younger, less jaded demographic than me.

Well... If your child is hearing voices there are three probable reasons for this:

1) He has a very strong imagination. 2) A traumatic life experience or mental health problems such as schizophrenia or bipolar disorder. 3) The house you are in is haunted.

As Don't Listen is a horror movie the third option is clearly the obvious one. This is a fine Spanish horror flick that is full of creepy moments - we get many of those wonderful shots of shadowy figures in the background - and the atmosphere of dread and horror as the malevolent spirit preys on the residents with a series of brutal mind games is great, that all said, it's unfortunate that the last act relied heavily on our cast of characters acting like complete idiots, which to be is fair standard horror stuff. This movie also answers the question, "What is worse than building your house on an ancient burial ground?"

Note: If flies are swarming around a crack in the wall it might be a good idea to find out what's inside that particular wall..

Pros: The story and the screenplay was good, never let me skip any scene. Jump scares are decent and were plotted where its needed. Unpredictable climax and the twist. Cast performances were good. Sound and cinematography was good, enjoyable with home theatre.

Cons: Not much but I felt some slowness in-between the movie.

Pretty basic loud horror but done right. No overly obnoxious jumpscare, some smart atmospheric spoopyness, and a decent interesting story.

This was disappointing. I was expecting a lot more from the Spanish. They usually make very good films especially horrors. This was mediocre at best. Standard Hollywood horror. Yes the ending is decent but it doesnt take away the fact that there was a missed opportunity here. From what started out as a promising horror with a good storyline just fell a bit flat in parts. The jump scares were predictable, the tension was good and could have been so much better if they focused a bit more on the payoff of built up suspension into a jump scare but it just didnt do it for me. I dont get the 10/10 reviews for this. The acting was good but i wasnt drawn into the characters as much as i wanted to be. Still worth a watch but dont go in expecting a horror classic that stands the test of time.