¡Qué horror! 2015
Candidate #9
THE VOICES
(January 2014)
"I don't have to listen to you. You're just a cat."
(The Voices OS’ courtesy of impawards.com.)
"Well, a cat that can
talk and reason, that’s a miracle for the ages.”
"So what?”
"So what?”
“But a guy who talks to
his cat, well that’s one step away from the loony bin. Find someone else, kill
them, and you’ll discover what it feels like to be truly alive.”
Jerry
Hickfang (Ryan Reynolds) is the “new guy in Shipping” at Milton Fixture and
Faucet International and outwardly, he seems the likeable sort. He lives alone
above the shuttered Mellow Lanes bowling alley, and he’s doing “a great job” at
work.
The
thing is, he’s not taking the meds he’s supposed to be taking, and, as a
result, he’s hearing the titular voices, apparently coming from his pets, Mr.
Whiskers (the mean and nasty cat), and Bosco (the gruffly positive and
supportive dog).
And,
as you can probably tell from the above lines of dialogue, Mr. Whiskers starts
telling Jerry to do some very dark and morally questionable things…
Marjane
Satrapi, whose entry into the feature film world was via co-directing the
adaptation of her own graphic novel Persepolis,
takes the Black Listed screenplay by Michael R. Perry* and gives us what is, by
and large, a very black comedy shot through with some dreadful, horrific
moments, and some potent emotional weight.
And
that’s all topped off with a pretty gonzo climax which segues into a pretty
gonzo (yet oddly moving, given the context) end credits sequence.
Reynolds
(who also provides the voices of Mr. Whiskers and Bosco, among others) does an
excellent job at portraying a troubled yet sympathetic character who, over the
course of the film, does some very dark and terrible things. And he’s backed up
by a commendable supporting cast that includes Gemma Arterton, Anna Kendrick, and
Jacki Weaver.
Oh,
and props go out to Cairo and Hamish, for embodying Mr. Whiskers and Bosco.
As
with many a ¡Qué horror! title before it, The Voices is not for everybody, but if you like your horror laced
with some strong black comedy (or vice versa), then you should really check it
out.
“The medication, it
smooths things out, and that’s okay, right? But even though there are bad
moments…”
“Very bad moments.”
“Very bad. There are
also moments of inspiration and beauty, when all the world makes sense, and the
elegant secret mechanics of Man and God are revealed in their many dimensions,
and the universe is laid out before mine eyes and it is a blessed place.”
“You totally stopped
taking the pills, didn’t you?”
“Totally.”
*
The Voices took the number 3 slot on
the 2009 Black List, a mere two votes
behind Aaron Sorkin’s screenplay for The
Social Network. (For the uninitiated, the Black List is an annual year-end
rundown of the most notable as-yet unproduced screenplays as voted for by a
variety of executives in the Hollywood film industry.)
