DVD Review: House of Voices

What is a horror movie without the scary music? If we take away the music and hit mute, does the same scene terrify us as much as it did with the music? For instance, take a simple opening scene from House of Voices and you see the bathroom taps will not run water, no matter how hard the orphaned (one assumes) Edward Gory type children try, but the minute their back is turned, all of the taps go on at once, shooting great spigots of water and filing up the sinks.

Should this in and of itself be scary? Sure. They didn’t go on before when a little orphaned boy tried, so there must be some other force at work here (a friend said, “the unseen hand” and that makes perfect sense) – so then it is this unseen hand that we fear. Not that the taps went off and spilled water everywhere, but that they went on at all. The boy, of course, will go back to investigate and we all know about curiosity and cats as we watch him climb the sinks to presumably find the source of the water. This is the opening of our film.

House of Voices may be formulaic in this way but that is what makes normal Hollywood horror films so good and so successful – someone must die within the first few minutes of the film and the music must lead us, deeper and deeper with its minor key piano notes of course both into and out of the scene. Cut.

Now next scene in which time has passed and all seems well in x-ville but we, smarter than that now, we know that things are not the same anymore. The music has told us so and even the happy music they play at this point is a bit too minor key that it borders on the grotesque, which is scary on its own.

The house itself is a large, almost empty mansion of old dusty wood floors and peeling floral wallpaper with dusty crystal chandeliers everywhere and women in layered shabby-chic clothes with their straight straight hair or overly curly toss and their perfectly arched brows and peaches and cream skin.

House of Voices could easily be like living in an Anthropologie catalogue – you know the one. The one that has clothes to die for and that would knock down your bank balance in a ten minute phone call to their 800 number. Perhaps I just have seen to much merchandising and I admit, I do buy from Anthropologie so the house didn’t strike me as that weird since our own house is the like those shown in Anthropologie as well – cabinets of found objects, dusty chandelier candelabras, and me, running about my own House of Voices in my dusty rose and tulle skirt and pointy oxfords all from Anthropologie. How would I fare in House of Voices. More, what the heck are we doing paying for clothes that make us look like they've been worn out for years and hang loosely off of our shoulders, exposing delicate neckbone, like the costumes in this fim. I am almost certain the costumer was influenced by the same sources as Anthropologie - the esthetic is much the dame.

Article Author: Sadi Ranson-Polizzotti

Sadi Ranson-Polizzotti is a published writer in both the United States and Europe. She is widely known for her music commentary, particularly her writings about Bob Dylan about whom she runs a highly-trafficked site. …

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