'Voice Of Shadows' Offers Devilish Twist To The Haunted House Tale

Every neighborhood has that house, avoided by other residents, talked of in whispers and nothing more. Maybe a terrible crime was committed there. Perhaps the owner was a notorious eccentric, or rumors persist of ghosts. For whatever reason, the property sits forlorn and abandoned, a bastion of dark imaginings.

Shunned homes have long been a Hollywood staple, from the classic black-and-white frights of The Old Dark House and The Haunting, to the murderous familial dens in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and House of 1000 Corpses. Those foolhardy enough to visit such dwellings do so at their own peril, as the central players in the spooky new ARC Entertainment/G57 Films motion picture Voice of Shadows learn the hard way.

After twenty-something couple Emma (Corrinne Mica) and Gabriel (Guillermo Blanco) are informed that Emma’s quirky aunt Milda (Jane Hammill) has passed away, they discover the old woman’s will contains two unusual stipulations. The first is that Emma must answer the phone whenever it rings, at any hour of the day or night without fail; the second is that Gabriel isn’t allowed in the house under any circumstances. The estate executor, Ernesto (Martin Harris), is willing to turn a blind eye to Gabriel’s presence so long as the first clause is carried out, but when Emma begins answering the phone’s inevitable rings, she hears only raspy, faraway voices. Distressed by the constant calls and the house’s increasing creepiness, Gabriel is further unnerved by the dire omens of local Native American landowner, Joseph (Sean R Jr. Soukkala), and a local priest (Bee Vang), who warn that neither Milda nor her humble abode were as holy as most believed. Milda, it seems, was an ex-nun that claimed to have ventured to the Other Side during a near-death experience, and upon returning became a conduit between worlds, smuggling damned souls to Earth from the lowest reaches of Hell. Milda plans on continuing her sinister work from beyond the grave, but can Gabriel unravel the enigma in time to save Emma from a similar fate? Or will his own unhappy past doom them both?

There’s a lot going for Voice of Shadows: it’s drenched in gloomy atmosphere and a slow-building, palpable dread. Every camera angle chosen by writer-director Nicholas Bain is designed to keep the viewer intentionally off kilter with just-out-of-sight figures and vague movements, a ploy buttressed by moody lighting, impressive visual effects and an expert use of sound. His reliance on suggestion rather than overt violence espouses a less-is-more storytelling philosophy that hearkens back to the Val Lewton scares of yesteryear that wisely fits the material at hand. The strongest asset at Bain’s disposal, however, is his cast. As a lead, Blanco endures nearly every second of the film’s roughly ninety-minute runtime; like Milda, Gabriel harbors his own grim secret: during his youth in Columbia he killed the cartel enforcer who raped and murdered his mother before fleeing to America with his sister, Celeste (María José Vargas Agudelo), and Blanco depicts his character’s deteriorating emotional state and churning guilt with startling vulnerability and realism. Hammill’s portrayal of Milda likewise deserves accolades; transforming from sweet elderly matriarch to merciless acolyte of Satan, her climactic showdown with Gabriel is blasphemous scene-chewing fun.

Still, this isn’t a perfect film. A slow burning narrative works to a point, but Voice of Shadows may frustrate impatient viewers with sometimes lackadaisical pacing. Another weakness is Bain’s overuse of ghostly clichés: creaking floors, muffled footsteps, claustrophobic basements, doors closing of their own volition, jump-scare inducing music—it’s the same paranormal tactics seen in any number of haunted house flicks from the past half-century, routine and dull. The aforementioned climax, too, succumbs to confusion, trading that carefully-laid slow-burn tension for a cacophony of sound and fury that ultimately signifies nothing.

Heavy with ambiance, striking visuals, and terrific acting, Voice of Shadows is a slightly above-average addition to the spectral subgenre that should entertain fans searching their favorite streaming sites for something scary this Halloween season.

I give Voice of Shadows a solid 3.5 (out of 5) on my Fang Scale. It will be interesting to see what Bain comes up with next.