Aspiring documentary filmmakers Peter (Christopher Denham) and Lorna (Nicole Vicius) go undercover as inductees into a secret cult with the aim of exposing its charismatic leader, Maggie (Brit Marling) who claims to be a time traveller from 2054. As part of the cult, Peter and Lorna endure a series of strange rituals in preparation for a catastrophic event Maggie claims will soon befall the Earth.
California has a reputation as a place where all sorts of outlandish belief systems are embraced, quite often by guilt-ridden rich hedonists seeking some form of spirituality to lend substance to otherwise shallow lives. It is a subject ripe for lampooning although surprisingly few films have proven successful at doing so, possibly because those new age religions worth mocking typically employ the kind of ball-busting legal teams able to de-fang the most biting satire. Sound of My Voice concocts a cult that is at once goofy yet unsettlingly plausible given past examples of such phenomena. Scenes where Maggie goads her white linen clad flock into eating live worms, crazy dancing and group vomiting are both funny and disturbing, yet the film is not strictly a satire. In fact it is hard to discern what exactly the film wants to be given it wavers in tone from silly to suspenseful, the one constant being its ambiguous attitude towards Maggie.
Having suffered a personal tragedy through an experience with another cult, Peter believes he is savvy enough to recognise a sociopath. But his scepticism is rattled when Maggie proves more perceptive (or insidious) than he imagined, as she unearths his own secret trauma reducing him to tears. While Peter assures Lorna he was only faking to convince Maggie and the other cultists of his sincerity, the film implies a shift in his attitude from sceptic to burgeoning believer. This proves the moment where events take a darker tone. Maggie tasks Peter to abduct an eight year old girl named Abigail Pritchett (Avery Pohl), who happens to attend the same school where he works as a teacher. Her reasons for wanting this unassuming, seemingly troubled child steer the narrative in a tantalising new direction, but the film hints at a second, altogether more sinister possibility that along with Abigail’s vague personal problems prove yet another sub-plot that goes frustratingly undeveloped.
Actress and co-screenwriter Brit Marling made a mark with the excellent, thought-provoking science fiction drama Another Earth (2011) with which this shares a similarly haunting quality. However, both she and co-writer-director Zat Batmanglij exhibit a shakier grasp of the often confounding and unfocused narrative which swerves onto several ill-defined characters. Ambiguity is a quality often praised in art-house dramas but can also be something of a cheap get-out clause for writers who have hit a stumbling block trying to develop their premise. By turns unnerving, stimulating and laugh-out-loud funny, notably when the cultists ask Maggie to sing a popular folk song from 2054 and she responds by performing “Dreams” by the Cranberries, Sound of My Voice marks out several promising pathways but steadfastly refuses to venture down any of them. This is at once its strength, arguably befitting the subject matter, but also something of a weakness given the treatment is too comical to unsettle, too ponderous to amuse. Nevertheless, viewed in a receptive frame of mind, the film has a certain ephemeral quality, simultaneously lyrical and eerie that can get under your skin.
