The Voices

I vividly remember the first time I popped the Blu-ray of The Voices into my player. I was eating a bowl of lukewarm spaghetti-os—the kind that leaves a weird orange film on the roof of your mouth—and within twenty minutes, I realized I’d made a grave mistake. Not because the movie was bad, but because it is so aggressively, vibrantly unsettling that "comfort food" feels like a slap in the face to the screen.

Ryan Reynolds has spent the last decade perfecting a very specific brand of "meta-cool guy." He’s the guy with the quip, the guy with the abs, the guy who knows he’s in a movie. But in 2014, right before Deadpool launched him into the stratosphere, he gave us Jerry Hickfang. Jerry is a factory worker in a bubblegum-pink jumpsuit who lives in an abandoned bowling alley. He’s also a serial killer who forgets to take his meds. It is, without a doubt, the most daring thing Reynolds has ever done, and it’s a tragedy that it’s often relegated to the "obscure curiosities" bin of the early 2010s.

The Technicolor Delusion

What makes The Voices so fascinating, especially looking back from a decade's distance, is how it uses the visual language of the "indie quirk" era to mask a genuine slasher movie. Director Marjane Satrapi—whom you might know from the brilliant animated film Persepolis (2007)—brings a graphic novel sensibility to the frame. When Jerry is off his medication, the world is saturated. The sun is too bright, the butterflies are too colorful, and his apartment is pristine.

But then the camera shifts. Jerry takes his pills, and the "magic" fades. Suddenly, we see the reality: he’s living in a filth-encrusted squat surrounded by pizza boxes and literal buckets of blood. This visual "flip-flop" is a masterclass in subjective filmmaking. It doesn't just show us a crazy guy; it forces us to live in the warmth of his delusion before dousing us in the cold water of his reality. Maxime Alexandre’s cinematography captures this transition with a surgical precision that reminds me of the mid-90s indie boom, where directors were experimenting with film stock and color timing to tell psychological stories.

A Masterclass in Vocal Schizophrenia

The real hook here, though, is the pets. Jerry has a dog named Bosco and a cat named Mr. Whiskers. Bosco is the "good boy" on his shoulder, encouraging him to be a better man. Mr. Whiskers is a foul-mouthed Scottish sociopath who wants Jerry to embrace his inner predator. Here’s the kicker that many people missed at the time: Ryan Reynolds voiced both animals himself.

I’ve always felt that Ryan Reynolds is actually better when he’s playing a loser who thinks he’s a winner. In The Voices, he’s essentially playing four characters: Jerry, the dog, the cat, and a stray deer he accidentally hits with his car. His performance as Mr. Whiskers is particularly inspired—it’s a cynical, rasping purr that sounds like a man who’s smoked three packs a day in a gutter. It’s a testament to his range that he can carry on a three-way conversation with himself and make it feel like a high-stakes psychological drama.

The supporting cast is equally stacked. Gemma Arterton (of Prince of Persia fame) plays Fiona, the office crush who becomes Jerry’s first "accidental" victim. Her performance as a severed head in a Tupperware container is surprisingly empathetic—and darkly hilarious. Then you have Anna Kendrick, who plays the "sweet girl" trope with a layer of genuine vulnerability that makes her eventual fate feel like a punch to the gut. This was right in the middle of Kendrick's Pitch Perfect (2012) peak, and seeing her navigate this morbid landscape was a bold career pivot that I still appreciate.

The Tragedy of the "Middle-Budget" Gem

Looking back at 2014, The Voices feels like one of the last gasps of the truly weird, mid-budget original genre film. It was produced by Adi Shankar, a guy known for his "Bootleg Universe" short films (like that gritty Power Rangers short), and it has that same "anything goes" energy. It didn’t have the massive marketing machine of a Marvel movie, and it was too "gross" for the typical Sundance crowd. It got lost in the shuffle of the early streaming transition, where movies that weren't "events" simply vanished into the algorithm.

The practical effects here are delightful. When Jerry’s fridge becomes a storage unit for the talking heads of his victims, the makeup work is tactile and grotesque in a way that CGI just can't replicate. It feels like a throwback to 80s body horror, but polished with a 21st-century sheen. It’s the kind of movie that makes you miss the "Special Features" era of DVDs, where you could spend hours watching how they rigged a talking cat or built a severed-head rig for Gemma Arterton.

There’s a deep, aching sadness beneath the talking animals and the pink jumpsuits. At its core, The Voices is a story about the crushing loneliness of mental illness and the desperate desire to be "good" when your brain is screaming otherwise. It’s a tonal tightrope walk—one minute you’re laughing at a cat calling Jerry a "pussy," and the next, you’re watching a man realize he’s destroyed everything he ever wanted.

The Voices is a vibrant, bloody, and deeply misunderstood piece of modern cinema. It subverts the "nice guy" persona of its lead actor to tell a story that is as heartbreaking as it is hilarious. If you can handle the tonal whiplash and the sight of a severed head asking for a sandwich, you’ll find one of the most unique horror-comedies of the last twenty years. It’s a pink-tinted nightmare that I promise you won’t forget, even if you try.

***

Cool Details

Vocal Isolation: To get the right feel for the animals, Reynolds insisted on recording their lines before the scenes were filmed, then acting against his own pre-recorded voice on set. The Credits: Stay for the end credits. There is a full-blown musical number involving the entire cast, including the "victims," that feels like a fever dream directed by a very happy ghost. * Directorial First: This was Marjane Satrapi’s first English-language film, and she reportedly took the job because she was fascinated by the challenge of making a "likable" serial killer.