VOCES/ VOICES/DON’T LISTEN

Spain, 2020, 97 minutes, Colour.
Rodolfo Sancho, Ana Fernandez, Ramon Barea, Belen Fabra, Lucas Blas, Nerea Barros.
Directed by Angel Gomez Hernandez.

This is a Spanish version of a Paranormal Activity thriller.

There is an eerie setting, a decaying mansion which a family is restoring. However, the young boy of the family does not like the place, hears weird sounds, voices, and eventually is found dead floating in the swimming pool. While his mother goes back to stay with her parents, the father stays at the house, having strange experiences, ominous sounds and voices, especially an appeal of his son to come to save him.

The father seeks out an author who has been involved in researching paranormal activity who comes to the house with his equipment, helped by his daughter. Not only are there eerie sounds, through strange presences detected on the screens – but not seen in reality. The mother returns anxiously to the house – has strange experiences, seeing her son, seeing mysterious presences, and hangs herself.

The expert discovers that the mansion used to be a court for the Inquisition. They explore the basement, finding the old implements, and a skeleton in a cage, a dead witch – whose rage has filled the mansion taking vengeance on visitors.

The expert also has an apparition of his wife who has committed suicide and who is in process of getting him to slash his arms. The daughter also has an experience of her dead mother.

The solution is to set fire to the basement and the witch. However, the father is still disturbed, hearing voices – and takes a rifle to shoot himself at the swimming pool. Certainly a grim perspective.

There is a post-credit sequence where a priest contacts the expert to come and help him deal with a woman in torment, which is visualised.

1. The title? Ghost stories? The paranormal? The paranormal experts?

2. The Spanish setting, the mansion, restoration, the interiors, modernised, the basement and the Inquisition? The book signing? The atmosphere of the musical score?

3. The credibility of the plot? The hauntings, the voices, communication through phones and media, the apparitions? The expert, his daughter, the equipment, the use? The detecting of strange presences? The effect of the presence on the characters, physical violence, death?

4. The revelation about the Inquisition, the mansion as a court, the trials, the witch, discovering her skeleton, the mouth torture, the cage? Her rage and the malevolent influence?

5. The family, Danny, Sarah, Eric? Early intimations with the red ball in the pool? The gate to the pool area? Erich, his age, at play, his drawings, with his parents, the fears, the hauntings, hearing the voices, his death in the pool? Danny, the renovations, investing all the finances, his work, relationship with his wife? Distraught at their son’s death? The funeral? Sarah and her going to stay with her parents? Danny staying, communication with her?

6. Danny alone, hearing the voices, wanting to help his son? Is reading the book, going to the book launch, persuading German to come, German bringing his daughter?

7. The presence of the flies, sinister, buzzing, going into victims ears?

8. The setting up of the equipment, Ruth and her wariness, her bitterness about her mother’s suicide? Seeing the strange presences on the screens? Yet none in reality? The effect on each of them? German, the search, the apparition of his wife, sitting with her, her talking, cutting his arm, Ruth discovering him and the rescue? Ruth later seeing the apparition of her mother, her mother calling to her?

9. Sarah returning, upset, going to the room, seeing Eric, his vanishing, the scope of law legs? The effect on her? Her hanging herself? The video showing her doing this?

10. The information about the Inquisition, going into the basement, the eerie atmosphere, the search? German and the torch, the confrontation with the witch? The flashbacks to her condemnation? Is setting her alight?

11. Danny, grief, the continued voices from his son, getting the petrol, pouring it over him?

12. The success of the process? Danny, his grief, the fly, the pool, his shooting himself? The family reunited?

13. The postscript, the priest’s phone call to German, the post-credits sequence of the images of the confrontation with the woman on the bed?