House of Voices (aka “Saint Ange”) Rating 7/10 October 24th 2005 01:02pm | Posted by: Editor-in-Chief Starring: Virginie Ledoyen, Lou Dillon, Catorina MacColl, Dorina Lazar, Virgine Darmon Directed by: Pascal Laugier Released by: Universal/Rouge Pictures House of Voices (aka “Saint Ange”) Review by Vince D’Amato | HNR Contributing Writer Seeing that this film was produced by Christophe Gans, the exuberantly stylistic French director of films like Brotherhood of the Wolf and the criminally unavailable (in North America, anyway) live-action version of Crying Freeman, I had a few expectations going into this supernatural thriller. Stylistically speaking, I was not disappointed. Director Pascal Laugier and cinematographer Pablo Rosso have created an utterly striking motion picture, every shot looks absolutely beautiful. And the raw beauty of young actress Virginie Ledoyen doesn’t hurt matters, either. The problem with this movie comes after about fifteen minutes, when the novelty of its sheer style wears off a little and you realize that the story is completely thread-bare. And the problem with the film’s story is simple and whole: it consists of both a thin premise and a weak plot. The thin premise sees young Anna (Virginie Ledoyen) arriving at a Catholic orphanage in the French Alps. It’s haunted… by sprits of several children. This is a haunted-house theme we’ve seen before in The Haunting and Darkness. To this film’s credit, it’s far better than both of those films – unfortunately, that’s not saying a whole lot. It strives to be as good as supernatural films like The Others or The Shining, but despite its immense stylistic merits, the movie doesn’t emerge from the rut of its own plot until halfway through – where the story doesn’t get any better, but the film still manages to pick up the pace and become more exciting, when (finally) we start discovering a few answers to the mystery. The problem with the plot part of the story is that it’s mostly delivered at a deliberately slow pace; and the problem with the “mystery” is that writer/director Pascal Laugier doesn’t know how to tell one. He keeps almost everything from the audience until the last third of the film, so we don’t feel like we (or the characters) are making any progress whatsoever, and hence, we’re left only with the gorgeous photographic compositions of the film – which can only take you so far. After things do pick up, the last 10 minutes or so gets un-excitingly enigmatic – an obviously intentional choice by the filmmakers – but then this doesn’t really make for a very satisfying conclusion. However, looking back at the overall qualities of the film, I certainly do think that House of Voices is at least worth a look. It’s not particularly scary, so I don’t know that it will cater to most horror-movie fans – other than the presence of co-star Catorina MacColl, whom die-hard horror fans will recognize from Lucio Fulci’s Italian zombie thrillers The Beyond and City of the Living Dead. I would recommend it for a slow, rainy Halloween-night rental – there are at least a couple of creepy scenes. DVD Bonus Features: Deleted scenes and a “Making-of” are included on the DVD. Source: HNR In: DVD Reviews |Visit the HNR Forums

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