Deborah Ross

The Voices review: a hateful, repellent, empty film

Slashings in the woods one minute, dancing pink forklifts the next - the film’s tone is all over the place

"THE VOICES", 2013 Director: Marjane Satrapi, Dreiundzwanzigste Babelsberg Film GmbH 
issue 21 March 2015

The Voices is ‘a dark comedy about a serial killer’, which is not an overcrowded genre, and I think we can now plainly see for why. I was up for it, initially. The buzz around the film had been good. ‘Unexpectedly pleasurable’, GQ. ‘Wild and hilarious’, Hollywood Reporter. Which just goes to show: never, ever trust reviews. This is a hateful and repellent and empty film. This is not pleasurable, unexpectedly, expectedly, or otherwise and it is neither wild nor hilarious. I bitterly resent each of the 104 minutes I gave to it, and I say that as someone who never has anything better to do. It may even be that I’ll never read another review again.

This is directed by Marjane Satrapi, whose first film, Persepolis, was a charming animation based on her own coming of age in Iran, so God knows what happened here.

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