Voices

source: Voices

Moviecut—Voices

After a moment of common carelessness has caused (or at least allowed) their young son to drown, both husband and wife sink into a morass of grief and mutual hostility. In order to save the marriage, the husband organises a weekend outing to a recently inherited property, to wit an abandoned mansion deep into the countryside. The reconciliation attempt doesn't go all all that well, especially after the wife begins to hear voices talking and giggling... This is a pretty good psychological horror movie of the restrained and understated kind. After a very slow, very deliberate build-up it ends in a truly chilling finale, which is at the same time unavoidable and unexpected. A masterful soundtrack and musical score add to the steadily growing sense of unease. So it's a horror movie, but at the same time it's a tragedy, giving the viewer an uncomfortably realistic portrayal of two people who should help and comfort each other, but spend much of their time ignoring or belittling each other's needs. (I thought the husband was being a particular jerk, but this may be the female perspective speaking.) During my life I have witnessed very similar situations. A great sorrow tends to tie solid marriages closer together, while it dissolves unhappy or uneven ones. Add great dollops of guilt into the mix, and the result will be the kind of infernal circle pictured in the movie. It's enough to make Dante cry his eyes out... Try and watch a good copy. The version I saw had problems with regard to the sharpness and resolution of the images.

Voices stars David Hemmings and the fantastic Gayle Hunnicutt in a bafflingly poor thriller. It tells the story of a couple who decide a bit of nookie is more important than watching their young child next to a heavy body of water. Child dies, she loses her mind and after recovering go away together to their country home. Before you know it she starts hearing voices and the question of whether it's in her mind or if something supernatural is taking place comes up. Trouble is the movie has no pacing, it's incredibly slow and essentially just about a bickering couple and her grief. Lifeless, boring and with a twist we've seen before but makes little sense here. The Good: Gayle Hunnicutt The Bad: Looks like a cheap episode of Dallas So boring Finale doesn't make much sense Things I Learnt From This Movie: I get the impression the creators of The Others (2001) had seen this

A protracted stage play on what looks like low grade videotape bookended by film sequences to remind you what the rest of it should have looked like. Unnaturalistic dialogue that goes absolutely where you expect, delivered with a generous helping of ham. My interest was piqued momentarily when I realised that the child playing John was in the tiger segment of Tales That Witness Madness, and there is a soupçon of guilty curiosity in watching Hemmings and Hunnicutt perform as a bickering couple in the knowledge that their real life marriage was at that time falling apart. Otherwise this is a colossal waste of everyone's time. Move along...

Deeply irritating marital squabbles pad out a 22 minute stage play to a 90 minute paint dryer. What starts as a Don't look now style ghost story (despite apparently being written before) quickly degenerates into a TV movie proto Shining about a sexed up joyless marriage with an obnoxious chauvinist and his long suffering victim. The transition from 35mm to video is a commencement marker of the absence of drama and intrigue as the turgid middle section endlessly repeats the same drama again and again. And again. Yes there are some smarts but its stretched so wafer thin to be rendered inconsequential. Until the climactic reveal (maybe surprising in its day) finally puts this sick animal out of its misery with an obvious twist.

A couple Robert and Claire go to an isolated house that belonged to her aunt to find peace and rest after the accidental death of their son and Claire's subsequent break down and suicide attempts. While there she starts to hear voices. Based on a stage play it is mainly confined to one set and with only Robert and Claire on screen most of the time. At 91 minutes it is too long and would have been better done in an hour.The mixture of coping with bereavement and a ghost story doesn't really work in this case. David Hemmings as Robert and Gayle Hunnicutt as Claire are fine in their roles, too well actually as the grimness of their mutual emotional roller coaster ride overwhelms any ghostly tension so the supernatural element seems completely unnecessary. The ending where they find they are the real ghosts who project into the past is a bit of a let down. Apart from the good acting and a brooding music score by.Richard Rodney Bennett it''s a bit of a slog to sit through.

****SPOILERS*** Since the couples-Robert & Clair-played by David Hemmings & Gayle Hunnicutt-8 year old son David, Adam Bridge, drowned after slipping off a waterfall at a local river Clair ended up in a mental infatuation suffering from deep depression in feeling that she somehow was responsible for his death. It's now two years later and Clair's husband Robert feels that a weekend in the country will help her overcome her guilt and get her back to normal. Driving to the out of the way mansion in the woods the couple have a near accident on the road due to the heavy fog that unsettles them and has the already unstable Clair want to turn back feeling that it's ,the near accident, an warning of things to come; She couldn't have been more right! Creepy story about a woman-Clair-flipping out of her skull by hearing voices and seeing things that causes her at the time more or less stable husband-Robert-to almost join her. With no heat or electricity as well as running water in the mansion it makes one wonder why Robert would choose this place to help cure his wife's paranoia? constantly hearing voices as well as later seeing people in the place has Clair ready to be re-committed. But Robert wants to cure her in his own way by confronting what's driving her nuts that's soon causing him to lose it as well! ****SPOILERS****After spending an horrific night at the mansion It's finally decided by Robert to go along with his wife's wishes and to leave the place as soon as possible or as the sun comes up. With Robert going to get the car Clair can't wait any longer and runs out of the mansion to meet him. And it's there that the two both meet the fate which they were totally unaware of that brought them there in the very first place!

I got this film because I like David Hemmings. He was just starting to lose his looks at this point. At first I thought, isn't this supposed to be a horror movie? His character seems rather cruel, but not supernatural scary. I thought maybe he was behind the events, trying to drive her mad. The flashbacks to the mental hospital were the most horrible part, I thought. The things they did to people there.... It's not graphic, but just the idea of one's rights being taken away and then some doctor almost experimenting on you.... It seemed too convenient that she would inherit an old house way out in the woods like that. WARNING WARNING, SPOILER HERE: I suspect the people who made Nicole Kidman's "The Others" had seen this film. Also "Beetlejuice"! However, the writer of this story may have been inspired by that Twilight Zone with the three astronauts going thru the motions again and again, I think with Jack Klugman. The time travel aspect did not make sense to me at all.

Although the other reviewers of Voices seemed to have liked it, I found this stagebound drama to be a bore. While on a boating vacation, a young boy disappears. He is assumed to have drown. The boy's parents (David Hemmings and Gayle Hunnicutt) were making love when the boy wandered off, so a strong feeling of guilt hangs over the surviving couple. Claire, the mother, eventually has to be committed after trying to kill herself. Just out of the hospital, the husband, Robert, has taken her to country to get away. While in the hospital, Claire inherited a country manor. The house is dusty and a dense fog hovers outside the house. However, the atmosphere is more chilly between the couple, who repeatedly reopen old wounds. Then, there is the matter of the voices that Claire is hearing in the house. Is the house haunted or is her illness back or is there something else going on? Admittedly, I started watching Voices thinking it was a horror film, which it is not, but I had a hard time finishing the film, in spite of its short running time. Based on a play, Voices is a talkfest where a couple bickers endlessly until there is a surprise ending, and this one does not seem too surprising any more. Admittedly, David Hemmings and Gayle Hunnicutt are both fine and any interest that I had was because of their performances, but, after a while, I just wanted them both to shut up. I will confess to not liking movies (or plays) like this. I did care much for The Pumpkin Eater or Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? either. Viewers with more patience for that type of drama may like Voices more than I did.