The Voices (2014)

Wonderful character development!

Stylish but barely mediocre overall

What a freaking movie. So many twists and turns. Absolutely intense from start to finish.

Excellent characters with emotional depth. My wife, daughter and granddaughter all enjoyed it...and me, too! Very good movie! You won't be disappointed.

I don't understand why this film has so low ratings! It's black comedy is great

"The Voices" is an odd horror-comedy type thing that isn't scary or funny or thrilling or much of anything. It's the fairly typical story about a boy-next-door who is also a mentally unstable killer. He has a crush on a beautiful office employee, played by Gemma Arterton, though another employee - Anna Kendrick - has a crush on him. His pets talk to him - a dog and a cat - and his psychiatrist, played by legendary Australian actress Jacki Weaver, has prescribed him antipsychotic medication that he refuses to take.You know that somebody's going to get killed, and then someone will find out who killed who and also get killed, and the body count will rise. The movie takes an ironic, light-hearted tone in regards to this activity; it's not a horror movie or even a thriller, really. It's also not funny at all, unless you think the sight of a talking dog and cat is amusing by default. The cat swears a fair bit, so some people might be amused by that, I guess.What is uncomfortable and unnecessary is that the movie adds a troubling backstory for the Ryan Reynolds character which doesn't fit at all with the silly tone of the movie. This is an explanation for his insanity that would fit in a gritty true-crime pic, not a deliberately ridiculous horror-comedy.The climax is also just not that interesting. It's quite predictable, like the rest of the movie, and I think they should have added something unexpected or interesting in there - aside from the awful song-and-dance number over the end credits.I'm not really sure what the makers of "The Voices" wanted to achieve with this movie. It gives the impression that they didn't know how to handle the light-hearted tone, or what the purpose of such a tone in a story like this is. The tone needs to clash with the content, but here they're both flat, they lie down and die, which is almost what the movie made me feel like doing.

I love a good dark comedy and so I was on board when I read the premise of Ryan Reynolds talking to his cat and dog about whether or not to be a serial killer. The premise works best as a dark comedy but the movie gets really depressing as it goes a lot into the character's actual suffering with schizophrenia. It becomes at different times a drama, a grisly horror film, and a cartoony surreal fantasy. I don't know. This is a really hard sell. I guess I can appreciate it's honesty in actually acknowledging schizophrenia and mental health problems but then they've sort of shot themselves in the foot as it cannot work then as a dark comedy. I don't want to laugh at schizophrenic hallucinations being portrayed as a cartoon in one scene and then seeing Reynolds with his therapist in agony in another. I think what the film should have done is start off with the comedic effect and then have it wear off as it goes into the seriousness of the situation. It doesn't. The film ends with a big dance number where Reynolds dances with Jesus and his victims.

How have reviewers rated this 1,2, or 3 stars? OMG, The Voices is 10's across the board, all day long. It is a movie about a serial-killer, but it is not dark or brooding for the most part, it is colourful and cheery, it is full of pink and fluffiness, it has a "talking cat, dog, goldfish, and another, it is full of happiness and light, so much so that you could think that I was talking about a film of a man finishing off his breakfast, but no, we are not talking about a cereal-killer here! There are many ways this film stands out from the rest, from its story to its direction, to its, well, everything before it. The performances of Reynolds, Arterton and Kendrick are all fantastic, but the film is made possible by the furry ones, and Reynolds' ability to diversify his voice, and make it believable. THIS IS A 10/10 FILM, no question, watch it, it will be the first movie about a serial-killer to leave you feeling all warm and fluffy inside!