House of Voices (2004)

The greatest movie ever!

Fantastic!

I have absolutely never seen anything like this movie before. You have to see this movie.

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

Have you seen Martyrs (2008) by Pascal Laugier, because you definitely should, but also because he directed this film too. The Orphanage (2007) obviously took a few cues from here.I'm only writing this review to save people time.If you enjoy Pascal Laugier/Guillermo del Toro type movies then you have every reason to check this one out.Wikipedia also says something I find very interesting about Laugier. Apparently he "was set to direct the remake of Hellraiser but was later taken off the project due to creative differences with the producers; Laugier wanted his film to be very serious and explore gay S&M culture, whereas the producers wanted the film to be more commercial and appeal to a teen audience." Wow, too bad, that would have been brilliant. Instead, they chose to make a Hellraiser for kids who enjoy watching the VMAs. Lol

I just finished watching this and after reading some of the brutal reviews and message board comments, I felt that I really should write a 'brief' review.First off, when all was said and done I didn't really find the film ultimately that satisfying; but, I think I am objective enough to say that mainly it is due to my personal taste and NOT because it is a bad film. I really wish people would be a little more fair when writing about these movies and separate the fact that THEY did not like it with whether or not it indeed was a bad film.Overall I truly felt that the director worked his @$$ off in this film and put his heart and soul into it. Also, THIS WAS HIS VERY FIRST MOVIE! So, c'mon, compared to the mountain of drivel that passes for Horror these days, graded fairly and comparatively, it was very well made. Very nice cinematography and direction as far as planning out every move meticulously and blending the lighting, sound, stormy atmosphere, etc. He also elicited competent performances from his actors too. BUT... for me personally anyway, here is the clincher... The pacing was WAAAAAAAAY off and the buildup WAY to long and the truly effective bits and visuals WAY too spare and subtle. If he had tightened up the pacing just a little and (I KNOW this next bit is gonna sound REAL Hollywood) livened up the visual scares a little, and would have given us much more visceral Gothic imagery and / or more startling clues (I mean COME ON, just one vague file folder and just about NOTHING else!???) Basically I feel that to make the film FAR more effective he needed to add some SUBSTANTIAL elements to drive it a bit more. I DON'T mean shallow jump scares, etc. (although a few more would have helped a little) Just look at THE master of this kind of film, Guillermo Del Torro. Now, that guy is very subtle too, BUT, and it is a VERY BIG BUT like Mariah Carrey's, he knows how to pace a film and ratchet up TRUE suspense and eerie atmosphere. I honestly think this director here has some excellent insight and quality to his film making, BUT I think he dwelt WAY too much on the drama between the ladies instead of building a better story. It was so melodramatic at so many points I was really thinking that a woman had directed it (NOT meaning at all to be unkind to women directors, etc., but merely that women directors USUALLY tell stories from a much more emotional and dramatic perspective then men do) So, the bottom line is, IF you have the time to kill and you are very, Very, VERY patient, you will see some very good technical film making; but, don't expect TOO much of a punch from the story itself. BTW, I really liked the ending; now THAT is exactly the kind of thing he needed much more of! He just needed a bit more in the way of disturbing imagery, subtle but more evocative of the atmosphere a film like this should have.

I love haunted house movies like some horror fans love a good slasher movie. I'm not talking about George C. Scott tooling around an empty house for some dead kid's bouncy ball. I'm talking about seriously creepy haunted house flicks where the house is possessed by stuff that would make Lovecraft rise from the grave. This film is nice to look at but it breaks the first rule of haunted house movies: it's ridiculously boring. Even after drinking a flagon of Mountain Dew, I had to struggle to keep my eyelids on the out and open mode during several stretches of this film. When I say nothing happens in this film, I really mean nothing happens at all. Some Natalie Portman lookalike babe who's hiding her pregnancy ends up at an orphanage in the 50's to work as a cleaning lady while the place undergoes renovations. Everyone vacates the premises except for the plump, matronly cooking wench and one orphan who's been there just a tad too long and does a bang-up Courtney Love impression. Apparently, the place is haunted but you wouldn't know that from watching the damn movie. A good haunted house movie doesn't rely on a few boo-jumps but more on solid atmosphere and creepy settings. I guess the director didn't get that memo. It's not awful, just extremely dull. That's a shame, because the house and the actors are there, but the story isn't. Toward the end of the film, the main character discovers what's really going on and what follows is so out of left field and jarringly gauche for the movie, I was checking to make sure I hadn't fallen asleep and accidentally started another movie while I was snoozing. If you want something playing in the background while you have a Saturday afternoon nap, go ahead and put House of Voices on. You'll probably have a boring dream about being a hot housekeeper in France.

I don't know what trauma the writer of this script had or even the director in their childhood.I don't know either what is their conception of terror, horror or scary....The only thing scary in this movie was my self being afraid of wasting yet another almost 2 hours watching this piece of crap.Starts out well, nice cliché photography, then goes worse and worse and worse... close ups, pumping music leading to NOTHING, a girl more scary than a squirrel on rabbies with huge teeth and zombie-like figure running around pointlessly.... what next? Filmed in an abandoned house? Perhaps the most expensive thing was to clear out some hospital corridors to take yet more close-ups of the beautiful and misguided main actress.As any usual french movie, some shots of her nude, completely unnecessary but she might get the front page of a playboy magazine or attract more ingenuous people (like me) to watch this slow torture.... avoid like the PLAGUE.Fail