Title: Voices Carry
MPAA Rating: Not Rated
Director: Abby Brenner, Ellyn Vander Wyden
Starring: Gia Crovatin, Jeremy Holm, Geraldine Singer, Jeff Ayars
Runtime: 1 hr 34 min

What It Is: Following the death of her previous restaurant endeavor, Sam (Crovatin) moves back to her hometown with her partner Jack (Ayars) in hopes of starting anew. There, they return to her childhood home to potentially sell it, when Sam begins experiencing mysterious happenings, including stray voices and screams in the night, found objects connected to her mother, and a lake that dangerously draws her forward. While Jack fears she may be loosing it, her odd friend from childhood, Henry (Holm), and an older woman named April (Singer), try to help her reveal the nature of these happenings.

What We Think: Upon the return of a woman to her hometown, strange things begin happening. The strange things occur at a stranger and more frequent rate as she finds herself increasingly drawn to the lake in her woodsy backyard. The the residents of the town can be strange. Her partner thinks she’s going crazy: maybe she is going crazy. And the woman also makes pickles. And that’s about it.

While the locations on display are attractively chilly, moody, and atmospheric, and cast lend solid performances, the rest of the fill falls into a dull lullaby of predictable spirals. The least predictable thing about this film as that there are surprisingly no conflicts, aside from the inevitable arguments between the performative romantics Sam and Jack. There’s a good myriad of other films with the same “lady goes crazy but she’s really in-tune with the twisted nature of events via instinctual/spiritual through-line.” The most positive note I have is the (thankfully) platonic chemistry that grows between Sam and Henry, where their exchanges are blissfully casual, much like watching an enjoyable conversation between normal people. Unfortunately, that’s all I was really left with: while the mystery is trickled at a respectable pace that never lags, the ending left me with nothing much left rewarded. One moment, a woman calmly makes pickles, then the next, she’s suddenly a victim to a fate due to some rather unconvincingly haunting circumstances that in any other film, would be revealed to be some just some misfortunate historical information.

Our Grade: D+, I hate to give a score so low, but in the end, the story didn’t really have much for me. Had there been more substance, suspense, mystery, scares, and everything that it had been going for, perhaps there could be more to look forward to, but this movie just didn’t push any of those buttons enough to make much of an impression. It looks nice, the acting is fine, the archetypes exist, and the title reminds me of the ‘Til Tuesday song. And that’s about it.

Editors Note: Here’s the aforementioned song.