01 of 31 Horror Films I've Never Seen 2016: The Voices (2014)

It's that time of year again, when Netflix and HuluPlus are overflowing with Horror movies, most of which I've never seen.  In 2014 I undertook a personal challenge to watch 31 films (one for each day) and it yielded a couple of interesting evenings (including one where I had to watch 4 films in one night just to catch up) as well as some downright awful bloody films.  But that's okay, they can't all be screamers.  To cut to the chase, I'm doing it again and in my own whimsical way of randomly selecting titles I started off with Marjane Satrapi's The Voices.

Set in rural Milton (anywhere USA), it follows Jerry (Ryan Reynolds), an upbeat man who works at a bathtub factory where all the workers wear these hot pink colored jump suits.  From the start there is an odd juxtaposition of the rural decay with pop color splashes and styles, suggesting that things are not quite as they appear.  Sure enough, they are not.  Jerry hears voices.  Well, more specifically, he talks to his cat and dog who take on a sort of demon and angel roles of Jerry's fragile mental capacity.  After a night gone wrong, things quickly escalate out of hand as Jerry finds himself in a constant moral battle with his own mind.

The film has an excellent visual punctuation of color cues (which should come as no surprise from the creator of Persepolis), usually Pink, that tip off the audience subtlety to the inconsistencies of Jerry's mind.  The world as Jerry see's it, is much brighter and optimistic, than when other characters are present.  Jerry's own apartment, immaculately clean and tidy, becomes a disheveled hoarder mess when other characters enter the space, and even when Jerry attempts to quell the voices with medication.  The attention paid to these details really makes the film as engaging of an experience as it is.  Throw in some mega doses of dark comedy and a seriously excellent performance from Reynolds and you have one hell of an enjoyable film.

While Reynolds performance is the central focus of the film, Gemma Arterton, Anna Kendrick, and Jacki Weaver are all perfectly cast as three central female presences in Jerry's life.  Arterton's queen bee manipulative user, to Kendrick's sweet innocence, and Weaver's professional obliviousness make for 3 complex dynamic relationships to Reynolds slowly unraveling Jerry.  It's not hard to figure out what's going to happen to who, but the actors are all in such a fine element that it stirs a strong reaction in the audience regardless.  Reynolds not only stretched his acting chops physically, but orally as well, taking on all 4 of the voices that assault Jerry throughout the film.

I thoroughly enjoyed this film and found it a pleasing start to this month of Horror.  It's only downside is that it clearly suffers at times from the indie film lack of background characters.  A small gripe, but one that may take others out of the experience.  Check it out on HuluPlus, or Amazon Prime!