Gripping family drama collides with a clever twist on the possession subgenre of horror in The Voices of Our Mother, streaming this week on Shudder.
From writer, director, and star Mark O’Brien (The Righteous, Nice People), The Voices of Our Mother follows the strained dynamics of an estranged family following a sudden death. When 95-year-old Johanna (Anna Ferguson), the grandmother of the Scaflen family and unusually attached caregiver of her daughter Harriet (Sheila McCarthy), passes away, Harriet’s four children (Mark O’Brien, Georgina Reilly, Carolina Bartczak, and Alex Ozerov-Meyer) reunite after years apart.
As Harriet experiences an unexplainable health scare, the four siblings clash regarding how to navigate their mother’s future and soon come to suspect that their mother’s health issues may be the work of something supernatural.
From old-fashioned opening credits that harken back to Universal monster movies of the 1930s and 1940s to an ominous red tint to the sky above, The Voices of Our Mother quickly establishes itself as an atmospheric and disconcerting watch. A mundane cold open marks one of the few notable missteps in Mark O’Brien’s otherwise absorbing film, which triumphs at the intersection of various genres.
While billed as a supernatural horror movie, The Voices of Our Mother is best characterized as a family drama with a supernatural underpinning. A somewhat disorienting first 10 minutes is easily overcome when the four Scaflen siblings reunite following the death of their grandmother and sudden health scare of their mother. Scene by scene, increasingly disturbing details of the siblings’ upbringings and how they brought their trauma into their dynamics as adults gives unexpected dimensionality and authenticity to a portrayal of four adult children plagued by mistreatment as children.
The film’s most enthralling scenes do not come in the form of more overt supernatural action, of which there is disappointingly little, but, instead, in the form of extended dialogue sequences between the four siblings. Mark O’Brien, Georgina Reilly, Carolina Bartczak, and Alex Ozerov-Meyer capture the complexities of both hating and loving our family through a myriad of engrossing arguments that feel real and have the audience hanging on every word.
Through the nuanced performances from the four performers and a screenplay that opts for showing rather than explaining, each of the four siblings feels like a fleshed-out character, filled with vulnerabilities and insecurities. Mark O’Brien’s William, for instance, is the de facto leader of the siblings and, on the surface, the most put-together of the bunch. But his siblings’ reliance on him has engendered resentment over the years, leading to outbursts.
As William recovers from the emotional heights of these outbursts, however, he quickly becomes more gentle and even apologetic for his actions, a seemingly subtle characteristic that tells the audience so much about one of our leads. The Voices of Our Mother does something similar with the other three siblings, crafting a quartet of protagonists who are flawed, at times infuriating, and yet ultimately deeply genuine.
As the siblings’ dynamics propel the film forward, The Voices of Our Mother also compels with an intriguing mystery at its core. O’Brien’s screenplay poses all manner of tantalizing questions to ponder over.
Why was Harriet, a grown woman with four children, taken care of so carefully by her 95-year-old mother who never left her side? What’s going on with Harriet’s health issues, which have caused her to remain in a catatonic state, despite doctors saying she has the constitution and lab work of a child? Why does Annika, the sibling who became a nun, experience dreams/visions of a demonic figure that repeats the same phrase her mother does? All of these questions and more imbue the film with a mystery that proves riveting to think over.
When answers to these questions arrive, The Voices of Our Mother avoids the kind of over- or under-explaining that many similar horror movies suffer from. Instead, O’Brien’s film arrives on a genuinely clever twist on the exorcism/possession horror movie that both makes narrative sense and inverts what horror fans have come to expect from such movies.
In the aftermath of these answers and reveals, however, the film wraps up far too briskly. There are a few shocking moments viewers almost certainly won’t see coming, but these moments bring the film to a premature and somewhat unearned conclusion. In part, this feeling of unearnedness comes from how engaging the siblings’ dynamics are throughout, so that when things suddenly conclude, one can’t help but want to see these relationships drawn out more and given the resolution they deserve.
The ultimate conclusion of the film, spotty visual effects aside, nicely bookends the beginning of the movie, although it once again stumbles in feeling undeserved. The final note that the movie culminates on is thematically powerful, and yet there is not enough character work beforehand to render this final note as authentic and genuine as the preceding sibling dynamics were.
The Voices of Our Mother may be billed as yet another supernatural horror movie coming to streaming, but it is far more nuanced than that. While the horror elements are admittedly and somewhat disappointingly limited, Mark O’Brien’s film excels as a fascinating and emotionally stirring family drama, one populated by strong performances and biting dialogue.
That the film speeds through its final act and concludes rather prematurely may disappoint, although horror fans will be both delighted and surprised by the film’s clever inversion of the possession/exorcism subgenre. The voices of our mother are certainly worth listening to.
The film begins streaming Friday, June 19 on Shudder.