Rather dreary British-made ghost story involves a bickering couple hoping to restart their marriage after a long period of mourning over the death of their child, who drowned while on a family outing at the lake. The wife, who later slashed her wrists and was institutionalized, blames herself and her husband for their son's accident (they were making love instead of watching him), while the husband feels the past is dead and it's time to move on. After the wife inherits her aunt's isolated estate, the shaky twosome drive out to the fog-enshrouded countryside to spend some time together, but she is unnerved from the moment they arrive--and is alone in hearing a child's giggle coming from the next room. Quite obviously adapted from a play, this talk-heavy piece hits an early wall in the first act with the husband (David Hemmings) making numerous attempts to warm up his spouse (Gayle Hunnicutt), while she alternately invites his advances and pushes him away. The material might have been more tolerable if the set wasn't such a gloomy eyesore--and if Hunnicutt's character wasn't so impossibly mercurial. For those who stick with it, there's a plot twist in Act Three that is successfully pulled off, although it renders much of the rest of the picture pointless. George Kirgo and Robert Enders (also the producer) adapted Richard Lortz's play, which ran on Broadway for a scant eight performances. ** from ****

Although the other reviewers of Voices seemed to have liked it, I found this stagebound drama to be a bore. While on a boating vacation, a young boy disappears. He is assumed to have drown. The boy's parents (David Hemmings and Gayle Hunnicutt) were making love when the boy wandered off, so a strong feeling of guilt hangs over the surviving couple. Claire, the mother, eventually has to be committed after trying to kill herself. Just out of the hospital, the husband, Robert, has taken her to country to get away. While in the hospital, Claire inherited a country manor. The house is dusty and a dense fog hovers outside the house. However, the atmosphere is more chilly between the couple, who repeatedly reopen old wounds. Then, there is the matter of the voices that Claire is hearing in the house. Is the house haunted or is her illness back or is there something else going on? Admittedly, I started watching Voices thinking it was a horror film, which it is not, but I had a hard time finishing the film, in spite of its short running time. Based on a play, Voices is a talkfest where a couple bickers endlessly until there is a surprise ending, and this one does not seem too surprising any more. Admittedly, David Hemmings and Gayle Hunnicutt are both fine and any interest that I had was because of their performances, but, after a while, I just wanted them both to shut up. I will confess to not liking movies (or plays) like this. I did care much for The Pumpkin Eater or Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? either. Viewers with more patience for that type of drama may like Voices more than I did.

I got this film because I like David Hemmings. He was just starting to lose his looks at this point. At first I thought, isn't this supposed to be a horror movie? His character seems rather cruel, but not supernatural scary. I thought maybe he was behind the events, trying to drive her mad. The flashbacks to the mental hospital were the most horrible part, I thought. The things they did to people there.... It's not graphic, but just the idea of one's rights being taken away and then some doctor almost experimenting on you.... It seemed too convenient that she would inherit an old house way out in the woods like that. WARNING WARNING, SPOILER HERE: I suspect the people who made Nicole Kidman's "The Others" had seen this film. Also "Beetlejuice"! However, the writer of this story may have been inspired by that Twilight Zone with the three astronauts going thru the motions again and again, I think with Jack Klugman. The time travel aspect did not make sense to me at all.

This movie is quite difficult to locate, which is a shame for horror fans. In the past couple of years, more sophisticated films such as "What Lies Beneath" and "The Sixth Sense" have been giving scary movies a good name. "Voices" is from this class of thriller because it achieves its shocks through the use of story and character interaction, with an ending that leaves you wondering and frightened for days. It is a simple story about a young British couple who want to get away for a short, romantic vacation in a secluded area of rural England. The destination is unfamiliar to both, and the journey there is ripe with dialogue so realistic and ordinary (plain conversation, arguments, reconciliations) that one might initially think "Voices" is an arty, ad-libbed drama as opposed to a horror flick. This mundane aspect is all a ploy to throw the viewer off, however. Once the young lovers find the vacation house, the mood shifts eerily and the sense of something threatening and supernatural surrounds the couple. They become frustrated, confused and hateful towards each other as their romantic weekend slips through their fingers amidst a haunting neither one can identify. The audience are left equally bewildered, because there is no standard, knife-wielding lunatic creeping outside,and there is no demon locked in the cellar. There is merely this sense of accelerating decline in the characters that is fascinating to observe, and we find ourselves needing to know what happened en route that has resulted in this bizarre situation. Ultimately, the final ten minutes of the film answers all of our questions and makes the subtleties we were puzzling over seem more profound...and the couple themselves discover it as we do, with just as much sense of terror.Submitted by Penny Dreadful, Halifax, Nova Scotia.