The road to Halloween is paved with good films. Wherein we countdown to the spirited season with a hundred doses of horror. 71 days to go.
Director Marjane Satrapi has had an eclectic career to say the least, since making her debut with the stunning adaptation of her autobiographical graphic novel Persepolis in 2007. She then went onto to make two French films before directing horror-comedy The Voices. This year, she returns with Radioactive – the biopic of Marie Curie, starring Rosamund Pike.
The Voices stars Ryan Reynolds as Jerry, a man with a mysterious past who works in a factory making bathroom fixtures and fittings. We learn fairly quickly that he is on some sort of court probation and has a court-appointed psychiatrist played by Jacki Weaver. He is delighted to be asked to help organise the company party with the hot British woman from accounting, Fiona (Gemma Arterton).
At home, Jerry has two pets – a large dog called Bosco and a ginger cat called Mr Whiskers. And, well… they talk to him. Bosco speaks with a Southern drawl a la Deputy Dawg and the foul-mouthed Mr Whiskers has a Scottish accent.
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One night, Jerry gives Fiona a lift in the rain, his truck hits a deer. Fiona gets scared and runs off into the woods and Jerry accidentally kills her. While dealing with the body, he cuts off her head and puts it in the fridge, where she joins the chorus of voices offering him life advice. He then starts dating another woman from accounting, Lisa (Anna Kendrick), but things are starting to unravel for him…
The production design by Udo Kramer and costume design by Bettina Helmi are two of the most distinctive features of The Voices. The colour pink is a motif that follows through the entire film, in different hues. The boiler suit uniform, logos and stickers etc at the bathroom factory are bubblegum pink and reminiscent of the Mendl’s packaging from The Grand Budapest Hotel or the prison uniforms in Paddington 2. Jerry lives in an old bowling alley, which has a retro two-tone pink and teal look, a little like the diner in Waitress.
Much of the film has a 50s/60s feel, especially Fiona’s costumes. At the company party, Fiona’s dress and Jerry’s shirt are a matching shade of dark pink, a subtle shift from Jerry’s ‘day’ uniform. The end titles are set over a song and dance number which echoes a 60s pop video – the colour palette of the costuming here is bright pink and orange, which stands out against the white background.
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These bright colours and the Americana retro-feel of this small town add to the sense that almost the entire film is Jerry’s fantasy. Jerry is a schizophrenic who struggles to take his meds – apart from one shocking scene where he takes them and the reality of his living situation becomes horrifyingly clear. The entire hyper-real world of the film is Jerry’s creation and his coping mechanism for life.
Another motif that runs through the film is biblical symbolism. The small town where the film is set is called Milton, a reference to Paradise Lost. In the car with Fiona (before things go awry), Jerry talks to her about heaven and hell and pops a trivia question about who is the fourth named angel in the bible (after Michael, Gabriel and Raphael; it is Lucifer – the fallen angel). Bosco is very much the angel on Jerry’s shoulder and Mr Whiskers is the devil.
The best line in the film is when Mr Whiskers says; “let me just play the Devil’s advoCAT for a moment.” Mr Whiskers indulges all of Jerry’s worse impulses – it is he who tells Jerry not to take his medication and he who encourages further violence. Reynolds voices both Bosco and Mr Whiskers, obviously demonstrating that they are Jerry’s internal voices and are the main manifestation of his mental illness.
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Although this is obviously a horror-comedy, I do not think that Jerry’s condition is treated lightly or is being mocked in any way. Reynolds genuinely portrays the anguish and turmoil that he is in and it is perhaps his best performance (especially when you take the alter-egos into account). There are flashbacks to his troubled past, with a violent father and a mother who had the same illness as Jerry.
There is definite trauma in Jerry’s life as well as his disease, which go some way to explaining his murderous actions, but the film doesn’t let him off scott-free. There are subtle hints to the fact that The Voices are Jerry’s projections – once Fiona’s head is in Jerry’s fridge, she starts talking in a much more stereotypical upper-class Brit way, using phrases like ‘tally-ho’ and ‘jolly good.’ She is Jerry’s version of a Brit, rather than her true self. He has viewed her in an idealized way from the start – perceiving her as a Disney princess, surrounded by butterflies. When he returns to her body in the woods (the morning after he has stabbed her) her clothes are magically clean and white and she is surrounded by white flowers.
The Voices is an extremely unusual film, in one of my favourite genre hybrids, the horror-comedy. It features a great central performance from Reynolds, well thought-out use of colour in the production and costume design and an iconic character creation in Mr Whiskers. It would make a worthy addition to any Halloween viewing you decide to do this year – it is funny, gory and entertaining as hell.
