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Ryan Reynolds Isn’t Bad, But The Voices Is Unwatchable

A quirk-filled serial-killer comedy that feels like something Sundance might have rejected as too trite 15 years ago (alas, it premiered there last year), The Voices has one bizarrely unexpected thing going for it: It’s the most likable Ryan Reynolds has been in a film in, well, forever, basically. He’s not necessarily good , mind you. As Jerry, a psychologically troubled young ex-con who works in a bathtub factory and hears his pets talking to him, Reynolds struggles to breathe life into a character whose main character trait is his lack of cohesion. But there’s something in there, finally, beneath that typically placid, passionless face of his … a curious, all-American dorkiness. You start to feel for the guy — not just as a man battling his psychic demons, but also as an actor trying to find something to latch onto amid the tonal mishmash of this film.

The Voices presents itself largely through Jerry’s perspective. He lives in a candy-colored world where he, for all his awkwardness, seems to be the only normal one; everyone else is too snotty or judgmental or weird. Save for his shrink, played by Jacki Weaver, who seems to be vigilant and caring. Then there are the girls — whether it’s Fiona (Gemma Arterton), the curvy new British girl in accounting, or Lisa (Anna Kendrick), the cute shrinking violet. At nights Jerry comes home to Bosco, a mopey dog who doles out pleasantries and platitudes, and Mr. Whiskers, a cat with a Scottish burr who offers nothing but doubt and exhortations to violence. “She’s from England, Jerry,” Mr. Whiskers says about Fiona. “In her eyes, you’re a ridiculous peasant!” Jerry’s pets may be the angel and devil on his shoulders, but the cat usually wins: As Jerry puts it later, “I try to be good, but certain terrible things happen.”

The textures of his world seem to change with the medication he takes, and we soon understand that what we’re watching is the creation of a deeply unstable mind. The Voices is a grisly movie, but it’s not a particularly graphic one — not unlike Norman Bates, Jerry seems horrified by violence, and the film has absorbed his revulsion. Director Marjane Satrapi (who made at least one very good film in 2007’s Persepolis , adapted from her own comic book about growing up in Iran) presents Jerry’s world with occasional reminders of the darkness that lurks beyond the walls of his mind. But it all comes off feeling like warmed-over David Lynch, with a little American Psycho thrown in.

The horrors eventually start to become more than Jerry can manage. As his life starts to go increasingly haywire, The Voices threatens to slide into slasher-movie drivel. It pulls back, but the hesitation feels less like playful subversion and more like a poverty of imagination. This film really doesn’t know what to do with itself, except to show us the difference between Jerry’s happy world and his dark world as if it’s some kind of revelation; it’s the one move the film has, and it does it over and over again. For his part, Reynolds has to do a lot (he does the pets’ voices, too), but none of it coalesces. Instead of each new aspect of his character fleshing out the rest, in his case, it feels like flatness added upon flatness. That’s probably the point: When the self is fractured to this degree, The Voices tells us, none of the pieces fit together. That may make for a compelling diagnosis, but as cinema, it’s pretty much unwatchable.

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Movie Review: ‘The Voices’

The times critic a. o. scott reviews “the voices.”.

By A.O. Scott

• Feb. 5, 2015

Is Jerry, who works in the shipping department of a small-town bathtub factory and who is played by Ryan Reynolds, a quirky misfit or something more dangerous? This question hovers for a little while over “ The Voices ” but resolves itself even before Jerry starts filling his refrigerator with severed heads of women.

Mr. Reynolds, all but pleading with the audience to grant the possibility of scary depths behind his bland good looks, cackles and cries and says strange things about angels. He also converses with his pets, who talk back, the cat in a menacing Scottish burr and the dog in a genial drawl.

Grisly but not especially suspenseful, tongue-in-cheek without any real wit, “The Voices” aims to hit the intersection of horror and comedy but tumbles into an uncanny valley of tedious creepiness. The bright colors and the fanciful, exaggerated Middle American setting are about as fresh as thrift-shop castoffs. The story (Michael R. Perry wrote the screenplay) is too far-fetched to be disturbing and too banal to work as fantasy.

So you are left to wonder how Mr. Reynolds ended up here, and to feel a pang of horror and bafflement when Gemma Arterton and Anna Kendrick show up to feed Jerry’s romantic prospects and also his serial-killer tendencies. The wonderful Jacki Weaver plays Jerry’s shrink. But by far the weirdest (and perhaps also the most disturbing) thing about “The Voices” is that it was directed by Marjane Satrapi, who wrote the graphic-novel memoir “Persepolis” and later adapted it for the screen . Whatever she was trying to do with these talking animals and decapitated corpses, let’s hope she got it out of her system.

“The Voices” is rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian). Bloody murder and a foulmouthed kitty.

Opens on Friday

Directed by Marjane Satrapi; written by Michael R. Perry; director of photography, Maxime Alexandre; edited by Stéphane Roche; music by Olivier Bernet; production design by Udo Kramer; costumes by Bettina Helmi; produced by Matthew Rhodes, Adi Shankar, Roy Lee and Spencer Silna; released by Lionsgate. Running time: 1 hour 43 minutes.

WITH: Ryan Reynolds (Jerry), Gemma Arterton (Fiona), Anna Kendrick (Lisa) and Jacki Weaver (Dr. Warren).

The Voices Review

The killer truth about cats and dogs.

The Voices is a jet-black comedy that certainly raises laughs, but also a somewhat unsavoury one that’s ultimately, frustratingly, far less than the sum of its parts.

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[ This is a re-post of my  The Voices  review from the 2013 Sundance Film Festival. The film is available today on VOD and in select theaters .]

The Voices is an insane movie about insanity.  That’s not me being hyperbolic; this movie is joyously, unabashedly out of its mind.  Director Marjane Satrapi , who previously helmed the coming-of-age animated pic Persepolis , takes audiences inside the mind of a psychopath in The Voices to wonderful results.  Ryan Reynolds fearlessly plays Jerry, a psychopath who converses with his dog, cat, and other disembodied parts in his droll apartment.  Through Satrapi’s twisted vision, we’re given a skewed and darkly comic view of the world through Jerry’s eyes.  It’s a wholly unique film that, while becoming a bit more conventional in its third act, is still gleefully violent, wickedly funny, and oddly charming.

Jerry Hickfang is a lovable factory worker who’s just a bit odd.  When the movie opens, it plays like an offbeat comedy in which the naïve and uncertain Jerry takes a liking to a woman working in his factory’s accounting office, Fiona ( Gemma Arterton ).  He subsequently goes about asking her to his favorite Chinese restaurant, Shi-Shan.  Fiona blows Jerry off on the night of their date, but is compelled to ask for his help when her car won’t start and the rain starts pouring.  Things eventually take a dark turn, and it’s safe to say that Jerry isn’t the adorable, bumbling oaf that many expected him to be.  Really, it’s not unlike the story of Norman Bates, albeit with a humorous and colorful twist.

As the film unfolds, we see Jerry visiting his psychotherapist ( Jacki Weaver ) where he lies about taking his pills, and another woman at work, Lisa ( Anna Kendrick ), goes about trying to woo Jerry.  In his apartment, he regularly converses with his cat and dog—though only when he’s while not taking his pills, naturally.  The cat is a condescending asshole (the Devil), while the dog is a simple yet goodhearted companion (the Angel).  These conversations are tremendously funny, and as the film’s humor gets darker and darker over the course of the film, Satrapi never completely loses her audience.

The visual cues in the film are remarkably executed.  When on his pills, Jerry sees the world as colorful and bright, almost as a picturesque 1950s society.  He wears bright colored jackets, smiles a lot, and eats the same delicious cereal every day.  This is the style in which the movie opens, but when Satrapi gives us a glimpse of the reality of what Jerry is seeing, these visual themes are all the more impressive.  Moreover, Satrapi plays with a number of horror tropes throughout the film, bringing an air of familiarity to some of the more tense scenes but always playing them with a slight twist that makes them feel fresh and odd.

Ryan Reynolds has gotten a lot of flack for never truly breaking out as the big A-list franchise star that Hollywood wants him to be.  In The Voices , he proves that he’s most certainly a skilled actor, as he proves adept at taking on darker, more difficult characters; he plays Jerry with a mix of glee, loneliness, anger, and, well, insanity.  It’s a truly go-for-broke performance, and it’s to Reynolds’ credit that Jerry remains sweet and sympathetic throughout the entirety of the film, despite the fact that Jerry is doing some very bad things.  The supporting cast is incredibly solid as well, but this is really Jerry’s film and Reynolds carries it with ease.

The film falters a bit towards then end when it becomes a tad predictable and slightly more conventional, which is a shame given that the rest of the film is delightfully strange and funny.  There are also a few iffy performances from some of the supporting characters that distract, but the leads—Reynolds, Kendrick, and Arterton—are solid.  Things come back around at the very end, though, resulting in one of the weirdest closing scenes that I’ve ever seen.  Seriously, this movie wears its crazy right on its sleeve.

Many people spend their whole lives trying to escape reality.  The world is hard and brutal, and sometimes it’s just easier to put all that doom and gloom away and focus on the positives—even if that means making some of them up.  Satrapi examines this idea to an extreme in The Voices , and the result is one of the best dark comedies in years, anchored by a truly terrific performance by Ryan Reynolds.  More of this, please.

• Gemma Arterton
• Ryan Reynolds

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Strong gore, language in bizarre but touching comic fantasy.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

The movie is more or less driven by its emotions r

The main character accidentally becomes a serial k

Gruesome sequences, with lots of blood and gore. O

A man and a woman kiss. They sit down on a bed and

Several uses of "f--k," "motherf----r," "s--t," "a

The movie's fake brand name for the fixture and fa

The main character drinks from a bottle of somethi

Parents need to know that The Voices is a black comedy with fantasy overtones and some extreme gore. Women are stabbed and killed, bodies are chopped, and severed heads are displayed. There are nightmarish flashbacks to a boy in terrible situations, and a deer is hit by a car and put out of its misery with a…

Positive Messages

The movie is more or less driven by its emotions rather than its ideas. The main character (who means well but does bad things) eventually learns to accept the consequences for his actions.

Positive Role Models

The main character accidentally becomes a serial killer. He tries to be a good and kind person, but the fact is that he does bad things and doesn't always help himself quite as well as he could.

Violence & Scariness

Gruesome sequences, with lots of blood and gore. Onscreen killing with a knife. Cutting a body into pieces small enough to fit into several small containers. Severed heads displayed. A dying deer is put out of its misery by a knife to its throat. Nightmarish flashback to troubled childhood; a mother asks her son to kill her with a shard of glass. A woman is roughly pushed onto a bed; she cracks her neck on the headboard. A woman is kidnapped and tied up with packing tape. Beating with a towel rod. Shark killings on television. An explosion. Yucky cat poop on couch. Vomiting.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

A man and a woman kiss. They sit down on a bed and kiss again; in the next scene, they're having coffee in the morning. Graphic animal mating on television. An Elvis impersonator thrusts his crotch while singing. Some innuendo.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Several uses of "f--k," "motherf----r," "s--t," "ass," "bitch," "a--hole," "hell," "buttf--k," "dips--t," "for God's sake," and "goddamn." Almost all language comes from the cat. "P---y" is used twice to describe the cat.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Products & Purchases

The movie's fake brand name for the fixture and faucet company, Milton, is all over the place, in a kind of parody of marketing and consumerism.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

The main character drinks from a bottle of something that looks like vodka; he gets very drunk. He also has prescription anti-psychotic meds; he takes one, and it makes him feel foggy. He tosses the rest. Other characters are shown drinking socially.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that The Voices is a black comedy with fantasy overtones and some extreme gore. Women are stabbed and killed, bodies are chopped, and severed heads are displayed. There are nightmarish flashbacks to a boy in terrible situations, and a deer is hit by a car and put out of its misery with a knife. Language is also very strong, mainly spoken by a cat character; there are multiple uses of "f--k," "s--t," "bitch," "ass," and more. Characters kiss, and sex is implied; graphic animal mating is also shown on a television. The main character gets very drunk in one scene and takes a prescription anti-psychotic pill in another. Though some of the movie's more comic elements (i.e. the talking animals) may appeal to teens, the overall package seems more pitched to adults. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

Where to Watch

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Community Reviews

• Parents say (5)
• Kids say (7)

Based on 5 parent reviews

Highly innapropriate for family viewing!

The actors are good but the movie itself is not, what's the story.

Jerry Hickfang ( Ryan Reynolds ) is a nice guy who works in packing and shipping in a fixtures and faucets company. Unfortunately, he had a troubled childhood and has been seeing a therapist ( Jacki Weaver ) ... but he hasn't been taking his anti-psychotic medication. So Jerry's nasty cat, Mr. Whiskers, and his loyal dog, Bosco (both also voiced by Reynolds), speak to him on a regular basis. While attempting to date the office beauty, Fiona ( Gemma Arterton ), Jerry accidentally kills her. Fearing how it would look to the police, he cuts up the body and keeps the head in his freezer. Things get even more complicated when another attractive co-worker, Lisa ( Anna Kendrick ), starts to show an interest in Jerry.

Is It Any Good?

This quirky film is quite a bit more vulgar than you might expect, with over-the-top blood and gore, as well as the cat's salty language (spoken in a Scottish brogue). Iranian-born director Marjane Satrapi published her own unique life story in the comic book Persepolis , made it into an animated feature, and followed it up with the big-hearted tragic romance Chicken with Plums ; all of those titles deal in unrealistic situations but are rooted in genuine, powerful emotions. THE VOICES stays true to this path. Thanks to Satrapi's understanding touch and Reynolds' warm, funny performance, Jerry's aching loneliness and regret feel real, and his occasional little victories and connections are moments of beauty. (It was a nice touch for Reynolds to provide all the animal voices, which also include a deer and a sock bunny). Satrapi's visual touches, like the pink of the warehouse and Jerry's bowling alley home (with its alternate fantasy-reality decorating), are both funny and melancholy.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about The Voices ' strong gore and violence . How did it affect you? How do you think the movie would have been different without it?

What's it like to watch movies that don't take place strictly in reality? Does The Voices have its own set of rules, even if everything isn't believable?

Is the main character sympathetic, even though he's a killer? How and why?

Since almost all of the victims are women, do you think that means the movie is taking a stereotypical view of them?

Movie Details

• In theaters : February 6, 2015
• On DVD or streaming : April 7, 2015
• Cast : Ryan Reynolds , Anna Kendrick , Gemma Arterton
• Director : Marjane Satrapi
• Inclusion Information : Female directors, Middle Eastern/North African directors, Female actors
• Studio : Lionsgate
• Genre : Comedy
• Run time : 103 minutes
• MPAA rating : R
• MPAA explanation : bloody violence, and for language including sexual references
• Last updated : February 15, 2024

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The Voices Review

Ryan Reynolds hears The Voices -- from his cat and dog -- in this weird horror-comedy hybrid also with Anna Kendrick. Read our review!

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I’m still not sure what to make of The Voices , an oddity starring Ryan Reynolds and directed by Marjane Satrapi, the Iranian graphic novelist turned director after the animated Persepolis and live-action Chicken with Plums . I’m not certain what she and screenwriter Michael R. Perry were going for with this tale, which veers all over the map between comedy, romance, satire, and quite gruesome horror with varying degrees of success and failure. Reynolds gives an admittedly brave performance but the movie’s hard tonal shifts create a feeling that no one has a firm grasp on what kind of movie they’re making, least of all Satrapi.

Reynolds stars as Jerry, a man who lives in the pastel-infected suburban town of Milton and works in its toilet and tub factory before spends his time at home with his dog and cat. He also visits his psychiatrist (Jackie Weaver) and it’s from these meetings – where she admonishes him to take his meds — that we glean Jerry may have a troubled past. Otherwise, he seems like a nice but socially awkward man who enjoys his job, has a crush on the self-described “office hottie” (Gemma Arterton) who shuns him completely, and barely pays attention to the perky girl from accounting (Anna Kendrick) who has eyes for him.

The problem is that when Jerry talks to his pets, they talk back, and it soon becomes apparent that the dog and cat represent the better and darker angels of Jerry’s fractured mind, respectively. It’s their voices that Jerry is supposed to shut out by taking his medication, with the cat nudging him toward homicidal behavior. Yes, Jerry is a serial killer, although all his murders seem to be the result of “accidents” that he has no way of controlling; at least that’s how he sees it. From flashbacks, we learn the roots of his disorder and they are as heartbreaking – if somewhat shallow — as one might expect.

Reynolds is Satrapi’s secret weapon here: he’s terrific and eminently watchable as Jerry, whose discomfiture yet seemingly genuine naivete goes a long way toward making us sympathize with the fact that he is one severely screwed up human being. Kendrick is also quite touching as a recent divorcee who’s simply looking for love and companionship and gets more than she could have ever bargained for. Arterton and the rest of the cast are given less to work with, and consequently don’t leave much of a lasting impression except when parts of some of them end up in Jerry’s fridge as remains that he also holds light-hearted conversations with.

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One of the best and most disturbing scenes in the movie comes when Jerry does manage to take his meds once – and sees himself and his living conditions for what they really are (not taking the meds allows his disturbed brain to see the world as he presumably wants to see it). A similar scene later on, when one of Jerry’s victims enters his house, is equally unnerving – also because we know the subsequent, sad confrontation between the person and a sincerely apologetic Jerry won’t end well at all. It’s these horror sequences that are the strongest in The Voices , although their impact is lessened considerably by the jokier, jauntier scenes that surround them.

Half of the movie is a grim portrait of a man suffering from horrific impulses and their aftermath while the rest of it is either superficially cheeky or satiric (it even has a musical number at the end, which apparently is now a requirement if Anna Kendrick is in the cast). It’s as if Satrapi had her own talking animals curled up on either side of her director’s chair, one urging her to goof off with the material and the other chastising her to take it more seriously. I know which movie I would prefer to see, and I wish that voice had won the argument instead of splitting the difference.

The Voices is out in theaters and on VOD Friday (Feb. 6).

2.5 out of 5

Don Kaye | @donkaye

Don Kaye is an entertainment journalist by trade and geek by natural design. Born in New York City, currently ensconced in Los Angeles, his earliest childhood memory is…

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The Voices (2015) | Film Review

Aaron B. Peterson February 2, 2015

The tone of a black comedy is one of the more difficult in film to achieve, an even more arduous a task is crafting one which actually clicks. A certain finesse is required to marry the elements of the absurdly hilarious with the macabre and “ The Voice s”, a film revolving around an extremely jovial and schizophrenic psychotic, is the latest to take a stab at the genre. It also serves as the rare exception where this approach sticks the landing, making “ The Voices ” one of the most whacked-out black comedies of this decade.

Ryan Reynolds stars as Jerry, a mild-mannered factory worker who spends every moment attempting to brighten the day of all those around him. Jerry is, seemingly, an all-around great guy. He also believes animals are talking to him.

Jerry has recently released from a psychiatric facility, seen as someone who could now function properly in today’s society, provided he continues his required prescription. Unfortunately, Jerry prefers the non-medicated, colorfully lit perception of reality as opposed to the more dour and factual dose he receives when the drugs kick in. As his evil talking cat attempts to corrupt his every whim, his yappy dog fights for Jerry’s moral soul, and his psychiatrist ( Jackie Weaver ) pleads with him to take his medicine before it’s too late; Jerry is presented as one very disturbed man at one hell of a crossroads.

Jerry then begins a romantic obsession with Fiona ( Gemma Arterton ), a beautiful and completely disinterested office accountant. Events also entangle him in a relationship of sorts with another fellow employee, one much more into Jerry herself, Lisa ( Anna Kendrick ). As “The Voices” progresses, and he becomes increasingly unstable, the relationship between Jerry and these two women comes to a volatile collision.

Getting into The Voices took some time. The screenplay by Michael R. Perry plays out primarily from the viewpoint of Jerry himself. So when Jerry skips his dosage, his murderous impulses play as almost incidental or necessary and he visualizes the world as a beacon of positivity and empathy. Only when the medication kicks in do we, the audience, get a full understanding of exactly how destructive Jerry’s mental plight has become. It is a chancy route to take, as any film with a lead who spends a significant amount of time enduring lively conversations with animals and severed body parts runs the risk of spinning into full-blown camp.

What keeps the film planted in semi-reality is Ryan Reynolds himself. Reynolds has long been a force in comedic work, yet thus far has floundered when trying to mesh his obvious comedic skill with dramatic fare. Jerry (and the various animals he also voices) affords Reynolds an opportunity to showcase his dual abilities when supplied with the proper material, an opportunity Reynolds firmly grasps the reins of.

Arterton and Kendrick both delight in their commitment to the insanity in the material, yet they serve as mere plot devices through which we absorb Jerry’s mental state than fully developed characters. The entirety of “The Voices” rests squarely on Reynolds’ shoulders, upon his ability to continue our sympathies even as we realize Jerry, regardless of the disadvantages stemming from his psychological condition, is a brutal murderer. We need to understand his shift from mental illness to factual reality and back in order to truly comprehend the extent of Jerry’s actions. Reynolds’ performance here should finally put to rest any doubts remaining on the actor’s dramatic talents.

As we weave in and out of Jerry’s tortured mind, director Marjane Satrapi keeps the film vibrant and alive. I cannot recall the last time a film this disturbing and ridiculous also made me laugh as shockingly and as often. Satrapi appreciates the material enough to allow it to play out as scripted, while other directors would shy away from the more ludicrous elements to focus on more visceral thrills. Even as we roll into the final act, as Jerry’s situation begins to level off and we settle in on a more singularly dramatic conclusion, Satrapi confidently swings the pendulum right back into the insane with an end credits scene that will either invigorate or infuriate everyone watching.

Review Overview

Acting - 7.5, story - 6.5, production - 7.

If $10 is the full price of admission, The Voices is worth $7

Starring Ryan Reynolds, Gemma Arterton, Anna Kendrick Written by Michael R. Perry Directed by Marjane Satrapi

Aaron Peterson The Hollywood Outsider

Tags anna kendrick cinema comedy drama film gemma arterton hollywood movie movie review podcast ryan reynolds

About Aaron B. Peterson

The Voices Review

20 Mar 2015

104 minutes

Voices, The

Ryan Reynolds’ first movie since R. I. P. D. will surely be one of 2015’s oddest. He’s a hyper-chipper worker at a bathtub factory, who also happens to be a budding serial killer. And he likes to chat with his pets.

The exact mid-point between Dr. Dolittle and Dr. Lecter, it’s tonally wonky and not as funny as was perhaps intended. But the underrated Reynolds launches a full-force attack on his role (or roles; he also voices the cat and dog), and there are staggering stylised moments, including famous heads in a fridge and a climactic musical number.

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Movie Review: THE VOICES

[youtube url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3hQpV9Q0A7E”]

In the pantheon of talking animal movies, The Voices is a decided outcast. Animals aren’t the only unusual talkers here either – there are also a couple chatty, severed heads in the fridge.  Okay, The Voices is an outcast in every imaginable way. From anything.  The Voices is its own genre. Somewhere between a dream movie, a slasher, a dark comedy, a goofy rom-com, and by ending something REALLY unexpected, is where it lies directly in the center. But that’s the charm of the film in that by playing with these different tones and genre tropes it’s wildly unpredictable and superbly entertaining. Prepare yourself.

Ryan Reynolds is Jerry a quiet, handsome office clerk that all the girls have a crush on. They don’t know that Jerry has some serious issues, though. He has deep rooted psychological issues, and not taking his medication leads to a self aware imagination becoming really, really strange. After a date with one of the girls goes horribly awry, Jerry ends up accidentally having to kill her. It’s difficult to tiptoe around spoiling the hilarious and disturbing series of events. Once Jerry decides to really go off his medication is when things get worse.  His only friends are his cat Mr Whiskers and dog Bosco, who sound like a Scottish asshole and Gary Busey respectively (both voiced appropriately by Reynolds). They play as his devil and angel on the shoulders in theory.  Then they begin to have the same opinion that Jerry is a certifiable serial killer…which is really just convincing himself…it’s tough to explain.

I caught Reynolds in Atom Egoyan’s The Captive late last year and was reminded how good the guy is at being a dramatic actor. Here he gets to play up both sides of his acting chops with drama and comedy, and he absolutely KILLS it. He gives mental illness a realistic approach, empathetic without being eye rolling, and knows how to play charming and dangerous in equal portions that the role demands. It’d be a shame not to give major notice to his animal personalities as well, essentially giving life to three separate characters with fully realized personalities. Anna Kendrick is also a stand-out damsel in distress, and the gorgeous Gemma Arterton’s bratty character is adorably deplorable, and later quite amusing as a reflection of Jerry’s many voices in his head.

Is The Voices an easy pass along to other people? Not at all. I have no clue if the movie would work for someone else as it did for me, but I’m aware of many glowing reviews out there aside from mine that would urge you to give it a shot. As I said, there’s nothing quite like this movie. Director Marjane Satrapi, most well known for 2007’s fantastic animated oddball Persepolis , has crafted a very strange flick that manages to walk a tightrope between tone and genre, and manages to make the mostly unlikable characters likable despite their icky natures. Michael R Perry’s script is a lot of fun, too. Who knows where reality begins and where Jerry’s imagination really begins. What exactly, if anything, happens the way that we see it? Is the whole film just a cracked mirror view of Jerry’s reality? You could get lost in this rabbit hole if you wanted to, but I don’t know if the movie is intended as something so deep.  The Voices is definitely more black comedy than it is a horror flick, so keep that in mind before watching and don’t expect a bloodbath. Think of me as a voice in your head, and I’m telling you to watch this one. Don’t hold it against yourself if you don’t care for it.

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In Theaters and Digital

The voices - movie review.

Opening with two tied-up women struggling for their lives gives audiences a knee-jerk reaction as award-winning filmmaker Nathanieal Nuon ’s new thriller, The Voices , begins.  Wait? What!  The Saw -like atmosphere of this slowly unwinding thriller, as it begins, might leave us a little disturbed BUT thankfully, we don’t stay trapped in this dark room with two crying women for long.

The Voices is a visually interesting horror film - with some great moments of gore reveals - that many, many layers but no straight TEAR toward them.  We are left to go from one flashback to the next, hoping that it will lead us back to that bound and gagged beginning.  It is a film with probably one too many narrative segues as we journey to get to the truth of why the dead are HELLBENT on communicating with a happily married and pregnant young woman.

Ripe with STACKED flashbacks, The Voices is about a blind child psychiatrist, Lilly ( Valerie Jane Parker ), who hears the voices of the haunted dead, and her coming to terms with her pregnancy.  Since the childhood accident that took her vision, she has heard these voices and some of their reveals have been quite disturbing.  

Starring genre regulars Ashley Bell, Jordan Ladd , and Leslie Easterbrook , The Voices might be unnerving in its approach to the supernatural, but the SLOW BURN at work here feels a bit too mellow at times to add up to its intended effect as LILLY - thanks to all the voices in her head - must decide which of these chilling voices will be reborn with the arrival of her child.  That’s right, her baby is merely a vessel for the voices she’s heard SINCE the accident.  

And they all want a chance to BE BORN AGAIN!.

Up front and center, though, is one voice which she absolutely cannot shake.  It is that of a little girl who is interwoven with a cold case from years past and now she finds herself in a desperate struggle with the girl's murderers and the souls vying to be BORN.

From Vertical Entertainment , and award-winning filmmaker Nathaniel Nuon , hear The Voices this April.  Co-starring Valerie Jane Parker ( Wrong Turn ), Jenna Harvey ( You Might Be The Killer ), Jonathan Stoddard ( The Young and the Restless ), and Rezeta Veliu ( Girls ) and written by Nuon and Daniel Hathcock , The Voices takes the lessons laid out in Paul Simon ’s Mother and Child Reunion to its HAUNTED heart.

Hear The Voices for yourself!  The horror flick is now streaming on all VOD platforms.

MPAA Rating: Unrated. Runtime: 108 mins Director : Nathaniel Nuon Writer: Nathaniel Nuon and Daniel Hathcock Cast: Ashley Bell, Jordan Ladd, Leslie Easterbrook Genre : Horror Tagline: Don't Believe Everything You Hear. Memorable Movie Quote: Distributor: Vertical Entertainment Official Site: https://www.thevoicesfilm.com/ Release Date: April 2, 2021 DVD/Blu-ray Release Date: Synopsis : After visiting her father's grave, Lilly and her mother are involved in a terrible car accident leaving Lilly orphaned and unable to see. In her youth, she struggles with her blindness and begins to hear voices. Unbeknownst to her they don't belong to the living. After years of learning to cope, Lilly is now happily married with a baby on the way. Lilly soon discovers her unborn baby has become a vessel a second chance for souls stuck in limbo to be re-born. She only has until the baby's first heartbeat to decide which soul will be re-born through her. Now the voices she heard in her youth have returned, clamoring for the chance to come back. Among the voices, she befriends the spirit of a little girl tied to a years-old cold case. Lilly finds herself in a desperate struggle with the girl's murderers and the souls vying to be born again.

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Home » Horror News » The Voices (2021) starring Jordan Ladd – (Movie Review)

The Voices (2021) starring Jordan Ladd – (Movie Review)

Last Updated on August 5, 2021

PLOT: Lilly (Valerie Jane Parker), a blind woman who can hear the voices of the deceased, finds herself at a crossroads when she becomes pregnant and faces the possibility that her baby may inherit her supernatural abilities.

REVIEW: Less of a scary horror film and more of a maudlin coming-of-age Lifetime movie about a woman who can hear ghosts, Nathaniel Nuon’s feature debut The Voices (watch it here) completely squanders its decent premise and fine technical craftsmanship through its muddled multi-timelines, shoddy acting, anodyne atmosphere devoid of any sense of menace, and painfully drawn out runtime…all of which add up to an impenetrably boring affair that will either take the patience of Job or a self-flagellating sadomasochist to finish in a single sitting. Seriously, this 108-minute movie feels like it’s four hours long and is quite a chore to endure, with none of the worthy payoffs you’d hope for or expect to be rewarded with for the painstaking effort of merely completing the film. Despite a freaky image or two, high-production values for its modest budget, and some above average camerawork, Voices can’t overcome its incoherent, uncompelling screenplay and dearth of genuine scare tactics. Do wise and plug your ears when Voices travels your way!

Set across multiple timelines, the story revolves around Lilly, a little girl who becomes a blind orphan following a tragic car accident that claimed her parents life. Raised by her aunt Becca (Jordan Ladd), Lilly soon discovers that she has the ability to hear ghosts in the absence of her eyesight. The film spends the first hour depicting Lilly at various stages of her maturity – from a child (Chloe Romanski), to a preteen (Jenna Harvey), to a teenager (Romy Reiner), and finally as an adult (Valerie Jane Parker) – while coping with her extrasensory curse. As an adult, Lilly has settled down with a husband and the two are expecting their first child. Lilly meets and makes friends with a little ghost girl named Madison (Claire Marie Burton), whose parents turn out to have a horrific hobby that may have led to her death. When Becca falls ill, Lilly is forced to care for her while the added pressures of impending childbirth continue to mount. As the movie slaloms between the timelines to show how Lilly deals with her gift at various stages of her maturity, it’s very difficult to discern the narrative thrust of the story or central dramatic fulcrum on which the film hinges. In other words, I have no idea what the hell is going on for the first hour of this movie.

When a medium enters the scene and informs Lilly that her pregnancy is doomed and that her infant has yet to develop a heartbeat, the plot comes into sharper focus, but never enough to truly care. The primary conflict seems to suggest that the malefic ghosts that tormented Lilly as a child have come back in an attempt to corrupt the soul of her newborn baby. Stuck in a purgatory limbo until the baby develops its first heartbeat, Lilly’s unborn infant is vulnerable to evil reincarnation. This is no doubt the most fascinating facet of the story, but it comes so late in the film accompanied by some poorly rendered CGI ghosts that it hardly makes a difference to the overall result. The dramatic crux of the film is simply too little and arrives too late to compensate for the preceding hour of inferior acting, editing, and storytelling. There is a decent parking garage scene in which Lilly is tormented with a gore-sodden infant as a sort of warning, and another with a sweaty old man aggressively attempting to fellate Lilly under her bed covers, but both are not only dream sequences, but they still can’t atone for the movie’s mawkish tone and lack of atmospheric terror.

Indeed, the temperamental tenor and visual tableau of the film registers as more of a Hallmark horror movie dripping with saccharine sentimentalism. Much of the action takes place in broad daylight and brightly lit, safe and sterile interiors, none of which feel like a macabre horror movie setting that conjures inherent danger. Still, to their credit, the craftsmen behind the camera make the movie appear much better than it is. The film is well lit and competently photographed and the crew members ought to be retained for a better screenplay. But again, Voices spends too much time portraying Lilly’s evolved coming-of-age without clearly laying out the main conflict or making her experiences very scary in the process. On the contrary, Lilly looks back with a wistful glint of nostalgia that lends a laughable Lifetime quality to the proceedings. It’s all so protracted and insufferably drawn-out that it becomes an unpleasant task to simply complete. There’s also the false advertising of the star billing, with Ashley Bell and Leslie Easterbrook on hand for just a single scene or two and Jordan Ladd used too sparingly for fans of either actress to feel satisfied.

To echo the sentiment, Voices is too muted to make a lasting impression. Despite an intriguing premise and some solid craftsmanship, the story is way too confusing, the acting is spotty at best, the runtime is laboriously overstretched, the scare tactics are too scant and ineffective, and the overall tone registers as a weepy Lifetime movie of the week. Honestly, you’re better off watching the 2014 Ryan Reynolds horror-comedy of the same name instead.

About the Author

Jake Dee is one of JoBlo’s most valued script writers, having written extensive, deep dives as a writer on WTF Happened to this Movie and it’s spin-off, WTF Really Happened to This Movie. In addition to video scripts, Jake has written news articles, movie reviews, book reviews, script reviews, set visits, Top 10 Lists (The Horror Ten Spot), Feature Articles The Test of Time and The Black Sheep, and more.

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The Voices – Movie Review (4/5)

Posted by Karina "ScreamQueen" Adelgaard | Sep 17, 2015 | 3 minutes

The Voices is a horror-comedy that works really well! You’ll laugh, jump, learn, and be creeped out. All while being entertained by the cast with Ryan Reynolds as the stand-out star of  The Voices.

You will definitely be getting a very different kind of thriller and horror-comedy, when you watch The Voices . But that’s a good thing and I found several scenes staying with me long after the movie was over. At the very heart of it, this is a movie about mental illness, and how to deal with it… or actually, how it can take over your entire life in a terrible way, when you refuse to deal with it.

In The Voices , we’re follwing the life of  Jerry (Ryan Reynolds), who’s living in his own little world. But the question quickly becomes; How much of his world is real and how much of what we see is actually only in his head?!

Reynolds’ perfect comic timing combined with his ability to act his heart out, is the combination required for this character. And he nails it! Jerry is a total sweetheart, and just the kindest and most helpful person, but you can tell something more is lurking right under the surface.

Ryan Reynolds and a brilliant supporting cast

There can be no doubt that this is Ryan Reynolds’ movie. Besides playing Jerry, he voices all the animals (yes, he talks to his pets and they talk back to him), so he really  is the majority of the movie.

However, the supporting cast is definitely doing their part as well. Especially Gemma Arterton – who was amazing in  The Disappearance of Alice Creed  – is doing a perfect job here. Also, both Anna Kendrick ( Pitch Perfect ,  Up In The Air ) and Jacki Weaver ( Silver Linings Playbook ) are spot-on in their scenes.

Director Marjane Satrapi

The Voices was directed by Marjane Satrapi – who had a pretty significant break-through with her autobiographical animated movie Persopolis back in 2007.

When you have an Iranian woman directing an American produced horror movie, the result can only be different from the norm. Which is a good thing!

And then there’s the added bonus of a script by Michael R. Perry, who co-wrote the script for  Paranormal Activity 2 . Also, he worked on various TV shows such as  The Dead Zone ,  The Guardian , and   New York Blues . He even won an Emmy for his work on the latter back in 1997.

A horror-comedy about a serious matter

There’s a very distinct tone throughout the movie and it works extremely well in mixing the horror and comedy. Even while  also giving us a very serious story about the challenges of mental illness. 

The Voices works because you never quite know what to expect. But you certainly know something is very wrong when the main character is talking to his pets; One is a big clumsy dog and the other a cat with a Scottish accent. The two pets are basically the embodiment of the angel and devil sitting on his shoulders.

You find yourself being slightly off balance while watching this, which means you have to surrender completely to the premise of the movie. Always a win in my book!

The Voices  is out on DVD, Blu-Ray and On Demand

Director: Marjane Satrapi Writer: Michael R. Perry Cast:   Ryan Reynolds, Gemma Arterton, Anna Kendrick

A likable guy pursues his office crush with the help of his talking pets, but things turn sinister when she stands him up for a date.

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About The Author

Karina "ScreamQueen" Adelgaard

I write reviews and recaps on Heaven of Horror. And yes, it does happen that I find myself screaming, when watching a good horror movie. I love psychological horror, survival horror and kick-ass women. Also, I have a huge soft spot for a good horror-comedy. Oh yeah, and I absolutely HATE when animals are harmed in movies, so I will immediately think less of any movie, where animals are harmed for entertainment (even if the animals are just really good actors). Fortunately, horror doesn't use this nearly as much as comedy. And people assume horror lovers are the messed up ones. Go figure!

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Directed by Marjane Satrapi

Hearing voices can be murder.

A mentally unhinged factory worker must decide whether to listen to his talking cat and become a killer, or follow his dog's advice to keep striving for normalcy.

Ryan Reynolds Gemma Arterton Anna Kendrick Jacki Weaver Ella Smith Paul Chahidi Stanley Townsend Adi Shankar Sam Spruell Valerie Koch Gulliver McGrath Paul Brightwell Alessa Kordeck Michael Pink Ricardia Bramley Alex Tondowski

Director Director

Marjane Satrapi

Producers Producers

Roy Lee Matthew Rhodes Adi Shankar Spencer Silna Nicole Barton Alex Foster Marco Mehlitz Thomas Nickel

Writer Writer

Michael R. Perry

Editor Editor

Stéphane Roche

Cinematography Cinematography

Maxime Alexandre

Executive Producers Exec. Producers

Christoph Fisser John Powers Middleton Henning Molfenter Elika Portnoy Douglas Saylor Jr. Cathy Schulman Adam C. Stone Charlie Woebcken

Production Design Production Design

Composer composer.

Olivier Bernet

Costume Design Costume Design

Bettina Helmi

Makeup Makeup

Nathalie Tissier

1984 Private Defense Contractors Mandalay Vision Studio Babelsberg Vertigo Entertainment

Germany USA

Releases by Date

11 sep 2014, 06 oct 2014, 19 jan 2014, 06 feb 2015, 12 feb 2015, 13 feb 2015, 20 feb 2015, 26 feb 2015, 11 mar 2015, 20 mar 2015, 23 apr 2015, 02 sep 2015, 29 aug 2018, releases by country.

• Theatrical R18+
• Theatrical 16
• Premiere Toronto International Film Festival
• Theatrical 14A
• Theatrical 12
• Theatrical N-16

Netherlands

• Theatrical M/16

South Korea

• Theatrical 18
• Premiere Sitges Film Festival
• Theatrical 15
• Theatrical R

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Popular reviews

Review by Eli Hayes ★★★★ 6

I wonder what Blake Lively thinks of this movie.

Review by Evan ★★★½ 5

Easily Ryan Reynolds best performance that I've seen. This film is very well made. It's considered a dark comedy, but I didn't find it all that funny. There were parts I laughed at, but I was freaked out more often than not. Which isn't a bad thing because the movie was effective. It gets pretty hardcore at points. Nonetheless, this is a solid little flick that I recommend checking out. It's worth watching for Ryan Reynolds performance alone. It appears he's finally tried something new and did a very good job at it. I would like to see Reynolds do similar roles in the future.

Review by #1 gizmo fan ★★★½

always listen to your cat

Review by lauren ★★★★ 1

really glad i had headphones in and my cat was fast asleep on me the whole run time because i would genuinely hate for him to get any ideas

Review by a ☭ ★★★★½ 8

i wanted to cry throughout the entire runtime This Is Not A Comedy It's The Saddest Movie Ever Made

Review by Naughty aka Juli Norwood ★★★½ 3

Mr. Whiskers the cat slayed me!

An odd but endearing film about a schizophrenic Jerry Hickfang (Ryan Reynolds) whose insightful portrayal of the effects isolation and loneliness play in the lives of the most social creatures on the planet (Humans) and what lengths we will go to.. to avoid it!

I loved Ryan Reynolds one man show in the film "Buried".. this role however shows just how versatile of an actor he truly is! This newfound vulnerability looks exceedingly good on Mr. Reynolds! As does his bold new choices in film roles!

In my opinion the cat and dog were severely underused! And the grand finale / anti climatic ending didn't do justice to the creative spirit of the film!

Review by DirkH ★★★★ 3

This is the type of film that if you're on board with it it'll work a treat for you. If you're not it'll probably annoy the crap out of you. I'm just glad I had no problem whatsoever with this darkly comical bit of schizophrenia.

The premise, walking around in a guy's head who hears voices, works really well. Satrapi makes some wonderful choices in how she slowly allows the viewer a peek beyond the protagonist's insanity. There's just something off about everything, something I found highly enjoyable.

Now here's a sentence I don't get to write very often: Ryan Reynolds was outstanding. It's not that I don't like him as an actor, he just rarely excels. Here he is…

Review by JamieBeltman ½ 4

Wow. Ryan Reynolds back at it again

Review by Wesley R. Ball ★★★★

Wow, Ryan Reynolds was actually in something I liked overall! His voice acting in the film was spot on as well.

Brilliant, darkly comic, and euphoric all at the same time, "The Voices" executes it's plot in a horror-comedy fashion much better than any other slasher film I've seen. This one was a ton of fun to watch.

Review by SilentDawn ★★½ 10

It's depressing just how well Ryan Reynolds nails this performance because no matter his dedication to the director's vision, it doesn't lead anywhere noteworthy or interesting.

Review by Esteban Gonzalez ★★★½ 2

“Do you ever hear voices?”

The Voices is a bizarre dark comedy starring Ryan Reynolds in one of his best performances to date. It is directed by Marjane Satrapi who’s better known for her Iranian Oscar nominated animated film Persepolis. The Voices takes a common element from animated films and applies it in a dark way here in this live action movie. We can all recall the classic angel and devil scenes in the Tom and Jerry cartoons where the voices tell the character what to do. Satrapi takes that familiar premise and applies it extremely well here as Reynolds’s character speaks to his pets. His dog, Bosco representing the angel, while his cat, Mr. Whiskers represents the devil. They…

Review by Eli Hayes ★★★★

The neapolitan roast of dark comedies.

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The foundation of most comedy is the gulf between our belief that we can control our bodies, words, and relationships and the reality that, most of the time, they're uncontrollable messes. “Babes” explores that gulf with exuberant joy, endearingly vulnerable characters, and performances filled with heart and charisma. Also with every possible bodily function and fluid. 

This is a smart and loving movie about female friendship. But before I get to the women, I want to say a word about what a pleasure and relief it is that it does not in any way trash the men. The central male characters, in every way, love, support, understand, and deserve the fabulous women in their lives. Another man struggles with mental illness but makes his sincere feelings clear. The women are not bonded over some litany of complaints about guys who can’t commit or who call taking care of their children “helping.” I love how this film is so capacious in its affection for its characters that it does not need to diminish any of them.

Dawn ( Michelle Buteau ) is a dentist with a devoted husband ( Hasan Minhaj as Marty), a four-year-old son, and, as the movie begins, she is about to go into labor with a daughter. Her best friend since they were 11 years old is a yoga instructor named Eden ( Ilana Glazer , who co-wrote the film with her “Broad City” colleague Josh Rabinowitz ). 

Buteau and Glazer give Dawn and Eden the kind of effortless rhythm that comes from knowing each other down to the cellular level. Their connection is more than just support—they are each other’s most enthusiastic cheerleaders. It comes from a combination of history, chemistry, and intimacy that rejoices in endless and fearless curiosity about the most minor and trivial details of one another’s lives. When Dawn and Eden go to a movie on Thanksgiving morning for the 27 th  year in a row, and it seems like Dawn is leaking amniotic fluid onto the seats in the theater, Eden peers into Dawn’s perineum to confirm that, in fact, her water has broken, and it is time to go to the hospital. Eden is there for the birth, as well. Dawn and Marty would expect nothing less.

Eden then becomes unexpectedly pregnant after a one-night stand with Claude (a dreamboat played with effortless charm by the winning Stephen James). But he is quickly and permanently out of the picture, and Dawn promises to be there for Eden as they have always been for each other. Still, we can see some ambivalence in Dawn’s face when she assures her friend that she will be up to single motherhood, even when Eden does not. Eden may not hear the slight frostiness in Dawn’s voice when she corrects Eden for calling herself a “Black mother” (“You are  not  a Black mother. You are having a Black child”), but we do.

Dawn and Eden are not 11 anymore. Like everyone else juggling what Zorba the Greek called “the full catastrophe” of family, the friendship between adults gets complicated. Dawn struggles with finding time and emotional bandwidth for two young children, returning to work, and a plumbing disaster in her apartment. Eden has the challenges of pregnancy as a single woman with Dawn as her only support system. Each believes she has been let down by the other. That is shattering because of how fragile their support systems are and even more shattering because it forces them to question the romantic notion that their relationship could never be anything but limitlessly perfect.

As much as we would like to pretend otherwise, life is inescapably messy. Breasts don’t always provide the milk they are supposed to. Babies do pee into your face sometimes. Being pregnant makes your hormones go crazy, especially in the last trimester. It means having your body possessed by a completely different person who shifts your center of gravity so you barely know yourself anymore. On top of all that, it gets you started on the kind of preoccupying worries that will be front and center in your mind for the rest of your life. 

This movie understands that lack of escape is okay because it is not just possible but necessary to love and laugh at the mess, the uncertainty, the randomness. As W.H. Auden said, “The funniest mortals and the kindest are those who are most aware of the baffle of being. Don't kid themselves our care is consolable, but believe a laugh is less heartless than tears.”

Nell Minow is the Contributing Editor at RogerEbert.com.

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Film Credits

Babes (2024)

109 minutes

Ilana Glazer as Eden

Michelle Buteau as Dawn

John Carroll Lynch as Dr. Morris

Oliver Platt as Bernie

Sandra Bernhard as Dr. Shirley

• Pamela Adlon
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‘bad shabbos’ review: kyra sedgwick and method man star in a likeable if formulaic new york jewish comedy.

Daniel Robbins’ ensemble piece, about a shabbat dinner that flies seriously off the rails, premiered at Tribeca.

By Jordan Mintzer

Jordan Mintzer

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As if their weekly shabbat gathering wasn’t already a reason for them to all start kvetching, imagine what happens when a Jewish family from Manhattan’s Upper West Side accidentally murders one of their dinner guests. Or when their future and very goy-ish in-laws try to pronounce the word “chutzpah.” Or when the Wu-Tang Clan’s Method Man shows up wearing a yarmulke.

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Directed by Daniel Robbins ( Pledge ), who co-wrote the script with Zack Weiner, the film is rather familiar in conception and execution, even if it concentrates on the very narrow community of upper-class Manhattanites that most of us know from the films of Woody Allen. Some of Allen’s humor is on display here, though Bad Shabbos is more prone to narrative hijinks and a few over-the-top plot twists.

Off the bat, you have to accept the fact that the Gelfands, as they’re called, are willing to do anything to cover up the untimely death that suddenly occurs in their apartment, whereas simply calling the police and fessing up would have been the better option. But this is not your average family.

The mother, Ellen ( Kyra Sedgwick ), is a micromanaging, passive-aggressive control freak. The father, Richard (David Paymer), is a charming if soppy patriarch, and certainly the most Allen-esque character. The eldest son, David ( Jon Bass ), is for the most part calm and clearheaded, whereas his teenage brother, Adam (Theo Taplitz), is a neurodivergent shut-in with a major Klonopin dependance. Meanwhile, their sister, Abby (Milana Vayntrub), is in the midst of a breakup with d-baggy banker Benjamin (Ashley Zukerman), who shows up for shabbat with plenty of bad vibes.

If you recall the scene in Annie Hall where the dinners between Allen’s Brooklyn family and Diane Keaton’s very WASP-ish Midwestern family are contrasted to perfect comic effect, you can imagine what happens when Meg’s family finally encounters the Gelfands. By this point in the story, Benjamin’s dead body has been lying on the bathroom floor for a few hours, with everyone freaking out and trying to find a way to get rid of it. They eventually decide to turn it into a “New York death,” whereby the banker’s corpse will be transplanted back to his apartment and hopefully discovered days later by a neighbor.

Totally unable to do this on their own, they enlist their friendly doorman Jordan (Cliff “Method Man” Smith), who claims to know how to handle any situation but seems way out of his league as well. Yet compared to the anxiety-ridden, prayer-spewing, Kosher-wine-slugging, constantly arguing Gelfands, Jordan comes across as a master of pragmatism. At one point, he even dons a kippah to pretend to Meg’s parents that he’s just another regular at this off-the-wall shabbat.

If you’ve been waiting your whole life to hear Method Man say: “It’s Shabbos, baby!” then this may be the movie for you.

The better bits tend to be Judaic-centric, such as the moment where the converting Meg refers to the Torah as a “prequel,” which is not the best thing to tell one’s future Jewish mother-in-law. Another gag involves the highly unstable Adam’s idolatry for the IDF — a joke that was clearly conceived before the current Israel-Hamas War.

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Horizon: An American Saga - Chapter 1

Chronicles a multi-faceted, 15-year span of pre-and post-Civil War expansion and settlement of the American west. Chronicles a multi-faceted, 15-year span of pre-and post-Civil War expansion and settlement of the American west. Chronicles a multi-faceted, 15-year span of pre-and post-Civil War expansion and settlement of the American west.

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• 8 User reviews
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The 2024 Festival Films You Need to Know

• When will Horizon: An American Saga - Chapter 1 be released? Powered by Alexa
• June 28, 2024 (United States)
• United States
• Horizon: An American Saga
• New Line Cinema
• Territory Pictures Entertainment
• Warner Bros.
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• $100,000,000 (estimated)

Technical specs

• Runtime 3 hours 1 minute
• Dolby Digital
• Dolby Atmos

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