The Voices (2014) [Review]

Unhinged and a little deranged, Ryan Reynolds stars as Jerry, a mentally ill introvert in this dark comedy about an unassuming serial killer. He works in a terrible job, with hardly any friends but appears likable to those around him, chalking his subtle weirdness up to the awkwardness of office socialising.

During the day, he plods along as normal, trying to please everyone and put on a composed front. Once home, he hears voices from his pets who have conflicting views as to how he should live his life, and begin to steer him down a dark path of no return. It’s in these sequences that we begin to see the cracks appear in the front portrayed by Jerry, and despite much of the comic relief coming from these scenes, a dark undertone remains present at all times.

The performances were spot on, and showed great awareness when switching between genuine sincerity, comedic idiocy and utter fear. Gemma Arterton and Anna Kendrick played off Reynolds well, and enabled his character to transition into his truer state seamlessly while providing the required sense of realism to make Reynolds’ Jerry stand-out as ‘different’.

The film is by no means an easy watch, with scenes of intense violence and disturbing confrontations contrasted against talking animals and Reynolds’ straight faced perceived innocence, it laughs in the face of your typical serial killer movie. To some it could be seen as offensive, somewhat uncomfortably nauseating, and the humour too dark to even be considered as funny, but to those who like the horror-comedy hybrid’s such as Housebound, Shaun of the Dead and What We Do in the Shadows, this film is for you.