This article was not originally intended to be about this movie. It was meant to be about a list of ten movies from 2014 to discuss movies from 10 years ago. But I watched this movie, and my plans changed.
It’s hard to be a good horror-comedy. Typically, they’re either funny or bad. The Voices manages to be ridiculously funny and genuinely tense and frightening.
The movie stars Ryan Reynolds as Jerry Hookfang, a mentally unstable factory worker who hears his cat, Mr. Whiskers, and his dog, Bosco, talk to him.
After hitting it off with his coworker Fiona, played by Gemma Arterton, at a work party, he asks her out. Due to miscommunication, she ends up standing him up, but her car breaks down when she’s going home. He picks her up and they decide to drive out to a restaurant. Then Jerry hits a deer. Hearing it beg him to put it out of its misery, he pulls out a knife and kills it. Fiona, a reasonable person, gets out of the car and tries to run into the woods near the road, and Jerry ends up tackling her and stabbing her by accident.
After seeing her struggling, he believes it would be best to put her out of her misery, so with some beautiful direction and a frankly incredible performance from Reynolds, to the point where I had to turn the movie off for a second, he does.
After this, he has a long talk with his dog Bosco, who tells him to go to the police and turn himself in, and his cat Mr. Whiskers, who warns him to collect the body and encourages him to kill again.
While distraught over what he’s done, he does return to collect the body, which he sees as healed and as pristine as before she was murdered. He ends up disposing of the body in various Tupperware containers. Except for her head, which he places in the fridge.
Now, from how I’ve described it so far, it certainly doesn’t seem very funny. The style of comedy in this movie is difficult to describe. Not quite crude, far too respectful for that, but it’s also not exceptionally lighthearted.
Most of the comedy comes from the absurdity of situations: Jerry’s innocent yet desperate positivity in the face of horrific situations and what appears, on a blind watch-through, to be somewhat run-of-the-mill visual gags. Also seeing Fiona as an angel, or seeing disembodied heads talk.
After a visit with his therapist and being worn down by Mr. Whiskers, he goes on a date with another office girl, Lisa, played by Anna Kendrick, with the intention of killing her. However, he ends up taking her to his childhood home while talking to her about his mother, who we see he killed as a child after she begged him to so she could avoid the hospital. Jerry and Lisa end up having a nice night, but the next day, she shows up at his apartment.
Up to this point, the audience has seen his apartment as this cutesy, clean, brightly colored 50’s-styled place, but finally seeing it from outsider Lisa’s view, it’s decrepit, rotting, and blood-splayed over every surface.
After an incredible scene where she sees one of Jerry’s interactions with Mr. Whiskers, Lisa ends up injuring herself in an attempt to escape, and Jerry puts her out of her misery.
When another employee, Allison, played by Ella Smith, comes to check on him, there’s a hard cut between him looking through the peephole and then placing her head in the fridge, before all of the voices surrounding him are too much and he runs to his therapist, played by Jacki Weaver.
While explaining what he’s done, she tries to call to cops, which leads to him tying her up, driving to the middle of nowhere, and demanding help.
Meanwhile, his employer investigates his home and calls the cops. Jerry gets back just a moment before the police and tries to escape into the bowling alley below his house, breaking a gas pipe on the way.
A fire starts and Jerry is given the choice to either stay in the bowling alley and die or to leave and be put away for life. After debating it and realizing that there’s nothing left for him, he decides to stay, leading to a beautifully shot scene where he lays down and passes away.
The final scene is a wild departure from the rest. It’s a musical number. Jerry, Fiona, Lisa, Allison, and… Jesus perform “Sing a Happy Song” on a white plane that’s presumably the afterlife.
The Voices is a weird, weird movie. It’s certainly not for everyone, but by God is it for me. The colors are done well and all go together, and every setting manages to make itself distinct with different levels of realism, also hinting at how Jerry sees the world. I’ve seen a lot of Ryan Reynolds movies in my lifetime (I do have a mom, after all), and his performance in this movie has blown them all out of the water. He tends to play one of two characters, Generic RomCom Leading Man or Ryan Reynolds. This was neither. He plays Jerry with so much heart and care that I would dare say it might be one of his best performances and certainly his most underrated one. He shows every aspect of Jerry’s grief and awkwardness and the overwhelming emotions tearing at him.
It’s a very stylized movie, and it’s done beautifully.
