The Voices – The Eye meets The Sixth Sense
Director: Nathaniel Nuon
Writer: Nathaniel Nuon, Daniel Hathcock (Screenplay)
Starring: Ashley Bell, Jordan Ladd, Leslie Easterbrook, Valerie Jane Parker, Jenna Harvey, Chloe Romanski, Chris DeBlasio
Plot: Don’t believe everything you hear.
Tagline – Don’t believe everything you hear
Runtime: 1 Hour 48 Minutes
There may be spoilers in the rest of the review
Story: The Voices starts as we meet Lilly (Parker) who lost her sight at a very young age and has been adapting to life ever since, through her childhood, teenage years with Aunt Becca (Ladd) who always watched over her and her adult years as a therapist.
Lilly has always maintained the people person side of her, which will see her getting visits from different figures in life, some want friendship, others with warnings, as it Lilly finds herself being guided through life by the voices in her head, who will help hide her from the horrors.
Thoughts on The Voices
Characters & Performances – Lilly has been blind most of her life, she has always been visited by what she believes are people, but are spirits that have guided her without her knowledge, the next stage of her life is here, as she is expecting her first child, which only makes everything with the voices intensify to new levels. Lilly is a character we see in three different stages of her life, which will bring three different actresses to the role, Valerie Jane Parker is the adult version that will bring us the version that goes through the horror side of the film. Jenna Harvey is the teen aged version of the character that gets to go through the growing up fun part of life, while Chloe Romanski is the one that learns to adapt. Becca is Lilly’s aunt that always tried to guide her and prepare her for life, be it the one that taught her from a young age, or the one that tried to protect her from people taking advantage of her. Emily is the lifelong best friend that always stood up for Lilly, making sure she is safe and is ready to become the aunt when she announces her pregnancy. Rezeta Veliu does work very well with Valerie Jane Parker, giving us the real feeling of friendship between the two. The movie might well have a couple of bigger names involved, which will add the star power, even if they don’t get the biggest performance to play out.
Story – The story here follows a young woman that has learnt to live as a blind woman after an accident as a young girl, with this she makes friends with what she thinks are strangers, but are in fact spirits visiting her, warning her and waiting for her. This is a nice mix of what ‘The Eye’ gave us, with the reverse effect, a blind woman regaining her sight seeing strange figures, here we hear them and ‘The Sixth Sense’ where the spirits are treating it like everyday life, with Lilly offering them the recognition that wouldn’t expect. As to how the story is told, we do seem to spend a little bit too much time at the teenager years, because of where the grander part of the story goes, as it does feel like we could have had a much bigger impact with certain moments in the final acts.
Themes – The Voices is a good horror mystery, with some scares along the way, with the spirits, while other moments will be used for more shock value. The mystery side of the film is the biggest question because we are hearing about reports going on and it does feel like Lilly is thrown into it by accident, rather than the planned path for the visits. There must be a mention to the weakest moment of the film here too, which is the special effects used to create something we see, outside that moment, everything else looked clean.
The Voices an interesting horror mystery that will look to keep us guessing.