The Voices-- My take on the movie with spoilers!

PLOT SUMMARY: Grace visits her schizophrenic sister Catherine to write a thesis on her. Soon she realizes there may be a haunting at play too. 

You know things are going to go haywire the minute a movie begins with a long drive to a remote home.

Cut out from everything and everyone, I don’t know why families in horror movies even opt for homes like these.

Yeah, a break from everything seems nice at first glance, but can you imagine going one day without WIFi, favourite snacks, pharmacies and restaurants to order from?

Unless of course, there is a secret one just preserve, then it’s understandable why some people prefer a cabin or home far from the inquisitive eyes of the outside world.

THE VOICES Movie Plot 

The story begins with Grace taking a long drive to her family home. On the way, she is accosted by a strange woman who slaps at her windshield.

Grace, seeing that the woman is homeless, gets out of her car and offers her a sandwich and money.

The woman stares at her like she’s an idiot, slaps away the money and takes the sandwich. In return, she gives Grace her cross necklace.

Grace continues the drive up a house where she meets with her sister Catherine.

Catherine is the elder sister and likes to chop firewood every day. She also likes to sleep early and wants to keep her schedule.

Grace thinks Catherine is eccentric but it’s fine. She wants to write a thesis on her sister so the crazier she is, the better for her.

However, Grace is also aware that mental sickness runs in the family, her mother did kill herself because she suffered from paranoid schizophrenia, something she sees in Catherine.

She is haunted by her own nightmares wherein she sees her fiancé making out with someone else. Turns out her fiancé had cheated on her and Grace was using this family visit to distance herself from whatever is going on in her personal life.

One night, Grace finds Catherine downstairs, talking like a child. As soon as her sister finds out she’s being spied in, she gets angry, but Grace is miffed because she was told to sleep right after sunset while her sister stayed up late.

Grace goes upstairs and gets into a closet, deciding that writing the thesis wasn’t enough and she wanted to make some videos as well.

The next day, Catherine is apologetic and makes her breakfast. Grace presses her about her estranged husband and daughter Abby who was taken away from her on the grounds that she was unstable.

Catherine retorts by asking Grace about her painful breakup. Point noted for Grace. She leaves her sister alone but is plagued by nightmares and voices, one such includes the homeless woman.

The next night, her sister apologizes again and the sisters play with the ouija board. They call out for a spirit and she names herself Penny.

Grace keeps asking Catherine if she knows anyone named Penny, but her sister changes the subject and goes to bed.

Grace is haunted by more nightmares, all of them including her fiancé cheating on her. She wakes up and goes outside to find her sister chopping wood. When she inquired about breakfast, she’s told it’s 4 pm and is requested to take the firewood inside.

True enough, Grace goes inside to see the clock show exactly 4 p.m.

She serves her sister dinner that Catherine had already prepared as per the schedule, and wonders what is going on with her.

She takes a pregnancy test and then another. To her horror, she realizes she’s pregnant.

She wonders whether or not to keep the baby. She also asks the ouija board if she’s having a girl or boy.

The next day she gives her sister the news and is terrified to find that the hereditary schizophrenia condition has an onset as soon as the woman becomes pregnant.

Catherine feels she will be okay but Grace is scared of losing it since she keeps waking up at 4 pm and is haunted by images of finding her mother in the tub after she committed suicide.

She goes into her room and finds the ouija board with the letters GIRL circled. Grace freaks out.

THE VOICES Ending Explained with spoilers! 

The next morning she tells Catherine this but she barely blinks and implies Grace is losing it.

Soon enough Grace sees a girl in her room and imagines it to be a spirit and perhaps Penny.

But she isn’t Penny. She calls herself Abby and that’s when Grace learns the truth.

Catherine wasn’t talking to an invisible Abby, but the real girl. Abby was kept hidden in the basement.

Grace informs her fiancé of this who is keen to reconcile and asks him to come to get her.

She takes Abby with her, telling her she’s her aunt and that they are playing a game she can’t tell her mom.

Of course, Catherine finds out because she’s super nosy.

Grace and Abby run across the bridge and just as they approach Grace’s fiancé, Catherine shoots him. She comes over and knocks Grace and drags her back to the house.

Grace is kept tied up in the shed with her dead fiancé and remains of Catherine’s ex-husband. Abby is playing around, unperturbed.

Grace manages to convince Abby to untie her who also reveals she’s the one playing with the ouija board.

Grace takes Abby again and runs even as Catherine tells her to stop. Grace tells Catherine that she is truly insane since she murdered her ex who was only being kind enough to let her see her daughter after the court decided she was unstable.

Grace is shot but when she falls down dead, we see it wasn’t Catherine but Abby who has had enough of the women screaming at each other.

The movie ends abruptly after this.

No explanation as to who Penny was. A real spirit? Grace’s unborn daughter?

And is Abby suffering from mental illness as well? It sure is implied after she murders her aunt.

The movie drags in part and just about manages to insert some interesting sequences. The horror part here isn’t ghosts in the house but the characters suspecting their own mental stability.

It was a good concept but manages to be successful only in bits and parts since it doesn’t explain a lot of things, mainly whether Grace was truly losing it or not. Or if Catherine has schizophrenia or is a psychopath?

Scare scale: 2/5