By Dan Skip Allen

Possession films or exorcism movies can be a bit hit or miss. More often than not, it’s the script and acting that can make these kinds of films worth watching or, in fact, be any good. “The Exorcist” is usually the high bar that most people judge these kinds of movies on. Now, “The Exorcism of Emily Rose” is another one that is pretty good. The latest in this subgenre of horror is “ The Voices of Our Mother.” It’s not quite what I’d call the best of this genre. I’ll go even further and say it’s not a very good film on multiple levels. I always give movies a chance, though.

Four brothers and sisters, William (Mark O’Brien) who is also a star, and writes & directs the movie, Annika (Georgina Reilly), Therese (Carolina Bartzsak), and Martin (Alex Ozerov-Meyer), are called to their childhood home to deal with their mother,  Harriet (Sheila McCarthy) who has been taken over by some kind of demon. This is a scenario that has been set up for years before after a similar situation happened. Their grandmother dealt with the situation, and now it’s up to them to help save their mother. It’s harder for them than they think because of their past differences. Love plays a big part in getting to the bottom of this crazy scenario.

O’Brien uses a lot of popular tropes and filmmaking styles to try to elicit reactions from the viewers watching this movie. One of those is hate speech by the Demon, who possessed the mother character played by McCarthy. Weird imagery and a creepy score as well as fire are all used as ways to scare or creep out anyone watching this movie. Priests and nuns are another way the script is used to get to the bottom of this situation. All things many directors have used in the past in these kinds of films. It’s typical stuff regarding this genre and horror in general. It was kind of exhausting, to be honest. I’ve seen this stuff so often that I’m sick of it.

One thing in particular that got me invested in the story at the beginning was the Annika character played by Georgina Reilly. She’s a nun and deals with a pretty scary cold opening. His belief system is one of the best aspects of the story. Love is at the forefront of the film. Her belief in God and her religion helps her be a symbol. O’Brien uses her as a way to save the picture even though the rest of the movie includes arguing siblings and greedy reasons for wanting the mother to die all crop up. This character was at least something interesting about the movie. Whereas most of the film was a big waste of time.

The villain, per say, was the possessed woman played by McCarthy, but there was a bigger threat overall. It wasn’t that scary, to be honest. There were a lot of creepy sound effects and cuts between scenes of characters arguing that showed crazy images of flesh tearing itself apart and other weird stuff. Quite often, fire was also used to make the scenes seem scarier than they actually were. All of this stuff was just window dressing for the big reveal at the end of the movie. O’Brien gave it the old college try, but I’d say he should just stick to acting where he’s good.

“The Voices of Our Mother” is another typical possession film that doesn’t do anything new with the genre. It recycles old things film/horror fans have seen many times before. I liked how O’Brien tried to give the movie a redeeming character in the Reilly character, but the rest of the cast, including McCarthy as the mother/possessed, were wasted in this film. A lot of arguing didn’t help me care about the siblings at all. Their motivations weren’t much better. The script let the film down, and all of the interesting imagery gave a bit of a style, considering I’ve seen many of these kinds of movies before. That was one of the redeeming qualities of the film, along with the Reilly character. Alas, though, this didn’t elicit anything from me regarding a positive reaction, so I’m sad about that.

The Voices of Our Mother will be streaming on Shudder on June 19th

2 stars