It may be an easy hit to make, but in The Voices, Ryan Reynolds, a nice but disturbed guy who listens to his demonic pets’ demonic advice to kill people, should have listened to the voice in his head that might have better dissuaded him from putting himself in this dud of a comedy (and you should heed this voice’s warning too, whether or not you decide to go in). Jerry (Reynolds) is a hapless yet chipper packing and shipping worker at a fixtures factory (really, a toilet factory), resigned to a job and life that’s really (sigh,) in the crapper. He has a few early issues that would plague any young, awkward introvert: he yields a work-place love for the hot English worker in accounting, Fiona (Gemma Arterton), and when he gets home, unloads his day to his cat and dog. Past the point of merely talking to them, however, the pets converse back, with the opposing moral viewpoints that serve as angel-and-demon consciences that steer stupid Jerry this way and that through a series of calamitous, stupid, and dark decisions that bring him into the role of a killer. The Voices is dumb, base-level humor, that may have enough of an inherently entertaining premise, but will end up separating those who are entirely offended by its gross-out comedy intentions and those who are happy to bumble through its series of many crude offerings, and there may be a much more resounding number in the former camp.

Written by Michael R. Perry (Paranormal Activity 2) and directed by Marjane Satrapi (Persepolis), The Voices feels sufferable from the get-go. Jerry, upon given the opportunity to host the company picnic, finally finds his chance to connect with Fiona, and soon enough, musters the courage to ask her out; he relays this good news back to Mr. Whiskers, the nefariously-minded Irish cat and Bosco, the dopey but morally centered dog (both are voiced by Reynolds, and a handful of other animals, with the same mediocre voice-work). But during the pair’s drive to their date, he smashes into a crossing deer–blood and glass through his windshield and washing over them both. And don’t forget, Jerry can talk to animals, so the deer, in a painfully obscene gesture, begs Jerry to put him out of his misery. Jerry slices the fallen animal’s throat in blood-spurting fashion, leading Fiona to run away in shrieking terror. And stupid Jerry runs confused after her, with the knife, and mistakenly falls on to her, cueing a moment that is supposed to lend itself to humor, but results in an objectively WTF moment that sets the stage for the rest of the film. From here, Jerry racks up more voices in his head that all try to persuade him to kill, kill, kill, so he won’t feel alone, or something.

This schlock-comedy won’t get a pass for having an inexcusably and barely funny script or barely interesting story.

Another point of the movie’s oddness comes in seeing the familiar face Anna Kendrick as Lisa, a co-worker who holds a crush on the perceived to be nice guy Jerry. Her inclusion in the film as a second act love interest, which also introduces serious-meaning flashbacks of Jerry’s scarring childhood, where he is seen needing to talk to sock-puppets for emotional catharsis, shows just how misaligned the movie’s intentions of being all things ends up being. Jacki Weaver as Jerry’s psychiatrist makes for solid casting, but again, everything that isn’t all-out bonkers derails the already shaky premise from excelling at even that.

Stylistically, it’s made and chopped up with the intention of being a dark and cult movie; though this schlock-comedy won’t get a pass for having an inexcusably and barely funny script or barely interesting story. Much more deserving cult-comedies earn their spot nestled in amongst gross-out times with friends by pulling out all the stops and centering their entire philosophy behind the one absurd idea. The Voice‘s biggest crime here in this brutal outing is that, as a story about a guy who talks to his pets and the severed heads of his victims, it all the while attempts to hang on to a thread of somber back-story, of Jerry’s traumatizing childhood, that led him to be this way. And it’s still one heck of a seismically-stupid movie. It’s not even surprising when the final credits roll and the cast sings and dances directly into the camera as the movie’s finale ending number, a self-aware nudge at the absurdity of the whole thing that only drives the final nail into this film’s coffin.

The Voices does not hold enough relevancy or fun times to warrant a watch, and it’d be assumed that Reynolds and company wouldn’t beg you to go out of your way to see it. Premiering at 2013’s Sundance Film Festival, the flick may have garnered early festival-high buzz, but its early February release should show that it’s back-burner material getting scraped off the slate. Unfortunately, Reynolds might have to suffer through more poor-project centered-reviews, if this even registers high enough on anyone’s radars before getting put to sleep.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2fKu_NMbNKM