Voices

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.

Voices stars David Hemmings and the fantastic Gayle Hunnicutt in a bafflingly poor thriller.

It tells the story of a couple who decide a bit of nookie is more important than watching their young child next to a heavy body of water. Child dies, she loses her mind and after recovering go away together to their country home.

Before you know it she starts hearing voices and the question of whether it's in her mind or if something supernatural is taking place comes up.

Trouble is the movie has no pacing, it's incredibly slow and essentially just about a bickering couple and her grief.

Lifeless, boring and with a twist we've seen before but makes little sense here.

The Good:

Gayle Hunnicutt

The Bad:

Looks like a cheap episode of Dallas

So boring

Finale doesn't make much sense

Things I Learnt From This Movie:

I get the impression the creators of The Others (2001) had seen this

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.

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.

VOICES (1973) is a slice of British psychological horror that I wanted to enjoy far more than I actually did. It starts off on a strong footing, with an excellent set-piece that basically copies the opening of DON'T LOOK NOW, and it has a good ending - but it's that long hour in the middle which is the problem. This is based on a play and it shows, as it's all about a conversation between two people interspersed with some very mild spooky moments.

The ghostly material is almost timid and other than a Bavaesque moment, negligible. Real-life couple David Hemmings and Gayle Hunnicutt are both fine, particularly the latter, but they can't do much with such uninteresting characters. Plus TV director Kevin Billington doesn't seem to have any affinity with the genre. The sudden cutting from the filmed outdoor scenes to the videoed interiors is quite abrupt too, which makes this look rather cheap and grainy - like a reguar TV episode from the era.