House of Voices (2004)

Touches You

Pretty Good

Highly Overrated But Still Good

Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

This is an artsy flick made in a typical French – that is, sluggish – style. If you are in for anything resembling a horror movie, or simply a structured and reasonable movie, you'll hate this crap from the depths of your soul. However, if you are interested in modern arts – that is, mental masturbation – you might be gripped by the beautiful cinematography, the suggestive music, the hazy symbolism and the plot's patent absurdity.After some effort at piecing the puzzle, you'll unveil the dull, repulsive humanist ideology conveyed by the director in the form of a condemnation of both Nazi human experimenting and French vilification of the bastard children fathered by German occupants after the second world war.

The film delivers for it's intent. Never was it billed as a Not to be a jump and scare ghost story, nor violently bloody. it nevertheless does have all of the ghost story premises intact, a large vacant orphanage secured away in the french alps, plenty of long corridors and winding staircases, and hidden rooms, this film is shot beautifully, and I really liked Joe LoDuca's score (LoDuca having worked with Sam Raimi, Bruce Campbell and Rob Tapert on the Evil Dead films and the Xena and Hercules TV shows) The film is what it is, a nice creepy and atmospheric film to watch on a Sunday afternoon drinking a cup of coffee, and the lead actress Virgine Ledoyn is really nice on the eyes. OK, maybe that's why I gave it a 7 out of 10, but the film's subject matter of missing and/or "scary children" along with the ***SPOILER ALERT*** hidden pregnancy of the lead character, really enhances the viewers investment. Runs a little too long, but as I said, the cinematography is exquisite, so the time passes pleasantly

I was eager to watch House of Voices, the first movie from the man who brought us the best horror movie ever made- Martyrs. But this movie is a failure, not so much for Pascal Laugier as a director, more so as a writer.In House of Voices, the lovely Virginie Ledoyen, plays Anna, a girl with a troubled past and who is pregnant, and who arrives to work at an orphanage as part of the custodian team. One of the orphans there warns her of strange children. Soon, all the kids are taken somewhere and only Anna, a Romanian woman- the head custodian, and an older teen orphan with mental problems stay behind.The house doesn't feature a whole lot of voices, but something is going on as we learn in he intro. The communal bath has a giant mirror and something goes on behind it. Anna is pregnant but at times appears to want to put an end to the pregnancy. She investigates the place further and finds pictures and files of children. The mental girl also whispers of children, while the woman tries to steer them away from all that.Eventually Anna, too, sees something behind he mirror, brakes it and craws to the space behind it, and further goes through a long shaft that will take her to some kind of a hospital facility were she will encounter her fears.House of Voice is very different from Martyrs. It has almost no violence, almost no gore, very little dialog. For the first hour, nothing particularly interesting happens as Anna walks through hallways endlessly and discovers very little. However, some elements from Martyrs are prefigured here. The movie looks good, has an interesting tone to it, but is very boring and slow for the most part. It is well directed, but in post-production Laugier dropped the ball. It's hard to believe he was satisfied with the cut provided by the editor. As it turns out, the most important scenes with dialog and that provide story ended up in the deleted scenes section. Every single one of them should have been included in the movie, while there are plenty of pointless scenes that should have been edited out.Also more interesting than the movie itself is the making-off featurette where the writer/director tells us more of what he had in mind. Unfortunately, it doesn't really come out well in the movie, again mostly because key scenes were edited out. But I also think that in the end, there simply wasn't a whole lot there in terms of a story to begin with. There is no twist, no major revelation, even in terms of meaning there isn't much there. You're really left to your own devices to make something out of the story.Fortunately, between this movie and Martyrs, Laugier figured out how convey his intention and the editor learned how to edit a film without butchering the story. It's not surprising that Martyrs and House of Voices where written and directed by the same person, but that they were edited by the same guy.

Seriously, what's wrong with you? this movie is so underrated, it has OK acting, Lovely music... and a plot which at some point certainly makes you wonder what just happened, BUT.. it's NECESSARY in order to accomplish the movie's goal, some of you need to understand that inside the genre of horror it doesn't always take a blood bath or a faceless and brainless killer who strangely teleports all around cutting everyone's head off and has more lives than a cat to actually be scared, that formula just DOESN'T work anymore with some of us.Before you watch a movie, you have to know what's coming, I mean, if you're going to watch like a Fantasy film, you cannot therefore be like.. 'Wtf?! that's not real, I'm wasting my time.. that's so out of reality!' This isn't the type of horror where you can expect massive murder or an specific situation that says 'HERE'S WHERE YOU ARE SUPPOSED TO BE SCARED' Nope, this is a psychological thrill where you take an important roll on developing the characters and the stuff that takes place, since certain situations can vary a lot depending on how the viewer analyzes it.. and that goes right from the start to the very ending on this movie.So, to sum up I gave this film a 10 because it's extremely under rated and it needs to go up a little, I wouldn't say it's a master piece either, but it would pretty much deserve at least a 7.Another movies you could like if this one was OK to you? Might want to have a look to Silent hill, Jacob's ladder, The others.