A woman tries to solve the mystery of the voices of lost souls that have
been speaking to her since childhood.
Review by
Sue Finn
Directed by: Nathaniel Nuon
Starring: Valerie Jane Parker, Ashley Bell, Jordan Ladd, Leslie Easterbrook, Jenna Harvey, Jonathan
Stoddard, Rezeta Veliu
Blind psychologist Lilly (Valerie Jane Parker) is assisting a child
patient cope with the death of her father. She ends the session by telling
the kid to be tough, as her mother needs her more than ever - not great
advice, especially from a professional!
She has a flashback to her own childhood when she lost her sight (and her
mother) in a terrible car accident driving home from the graveyard where
her father is buried.
Overbearing melodramatic orchestral music tells us this is a Sad Scene in
case the audience missed it; this music continues to intrude throughout
the movie.
Young Lilly (Chloe Romanski, with Jenna Harvey playing her
teen incarnation) starts hearing voices after the accident, but whether
these are ghosts or hallucinations is up for interpretation.
When the older present-day Lilly has a client who happens to be a medium
(Diana), it opens a dialogue about the nature of life and death;
particularly when it comes out that Lillian is pregnant and the medium
(never once credible as a grieving mother) believes her dead son can be
reborn in Lilly’s child. We are introduced to a very large cast of
characters including ghosts, killers, police, extended friend circles etc.
and the story is filled with lots of flashbacks as it goes on, and on, and
on.
Padded out with unnecessary scenes such as get-togethers with friends that
seem to come out of nowhere and instead of adding context just add
confusion, this film is lacking a central driving narrative. I wouldn’t
have known what this is meant to be about if I hadn’t read a synopsis.
The script by director Nathaniel Nuon is where the problem lies. It
needs honing and tightening, not to mention trimming at least 20 minutes
from its flabby 1 hour and 50-minute screen time. His direction is fine
however, and allows one or two effectively creepy scenes to really shine;
his restraint works well and allows an audience to feel suitably chilled
rather than the gross-out he could have gone for.
A lot of the acting is wooden and you get the feeling that there was a
time constraint and therefore they only got a chance to do one take of
each scene; not enough care was taken here in order to get a more
naturalistic feel from the performers.
Unfortunately because of its length, it really does struggle to maintain
interest. There’s a thread of a tale about a little girl called Madison
(Claire Marie Burton) that runs through the film and is somewhat
intriguing, but there is so much unnecessary ‘story’ that it gets lost in
all the fluff until it becomes central to the ending. The supernatural
stuff at the long-time-coming finale feels a little silly, the
‘philosophical’ voiceover is annoying and ‘Hallmark’, and of course
there’s that painfully tedious script. This is a film that thinks it can
have its cake and eat it too, but in trying to be and do everything, it
never fully succeeds at anything.
On the positive side, I do like some of the cinematography - it is quite a
handsome looking film, and I appreciate the little touches such as
changing Lilly’s sunglasses for different occasions and ages.
There is also a dream scene that is truly the stuff of nightmares and
won’t easily be forgotten.
This isn’t a bad film; it's a frustrating one because it could and should
have been much better if it could have stuck to a genre and stripped the
confounding dead weight. Hopefully the next project from Nuon will fulfill
this film’s promise.
Voices is on UK/ROI VOD/Digital
now.
