1. westondeboer

   10

   My love for this movie is based on the fact that it leaves things very ambiguous, I don't need full story lines explaining every single little detail. I need my imagination to fill in the blanks. It was shot very low budget like the movie primer and it make me love indie cinema. If you like seeing the whole story, and you like having answers, this movie isn't for you. This movie is a romantic movie about what you believe in, or don't believe in. This is a perfect date movie, you will learn more about your significant other than any other movie.… Expand

   • Helpful? 0 of 1 users said Yes.
2. Shiira

   9

   This review contains spoilers. Outside the train car, on a platform, a mysterious blonde woman lights Bennett Marco's cigarette, then says, "Maryland is a beautiful state." The sound of Rosie's voice makes the major her hostage. He would eat earthworms; he would vomit up an apple. Similarly, in Sound of My Voice, Peter becomes a Manchurian Candidate of sorts, when Maggie lights a cigarette, and asks him to commit a crime. Her followers aren't formally brainwashed like the infantry platoon in the 1962 John Frankenheimer film, but it's close. This supposed time-traveler, when coaxed into singing a popular song from 2054, chooses The Cranberries' "Dreams". Rather than point out the incontrovertible fact that the Dolores O'Riordan-sung hit is, in fact, an oldie, Maggie's adherents join in the sing-a-long, with the exception of Lam, who is through with magical thinking, and pedantically points out to his guru the era in which "Dreams" came out. Angered by being put on the spot, Maggie ousts the skeptic from the "cult". The challenge to her validity as a futurist agitates Maggie, and in that instant, the mystique she had imposed on the group is lost, thereby reducing the charismatic time traveler into a dangerous flake. As way of explaining the gaffe, Maggie explains that "Dreams" had been made popular again by a performer from her time. Without any CDs or MP3's, presumably destroyed in the alleged civil war, it's plausible that she wouldn't know the 60-year-old song(for her) was a cover, or plagiarized. Singing a well-known song from the nineties either makes Maggie a dumb blonde, the charlatan that documentary filmmakers Peter and Lorna purport her to be, or the real McCoy, a woman from a dystopian future, who, in all likelihood, is on a mission that has something to do with the preservation of the time line. If Maggie was a fraud, wouldn't she have anticipated such an occasion, and prepared an original, or obscure song, to prove herself? In The Manchurian Candidate, Rosie says, "I was one of the original Chinese workmen who laid the track on this stretch," making her sound like a time traveler. Is she preparing Marco to be the next terminator, in the event that Raymond fails? Unfortunately, Sound of My Voice ends before things get interesting, just when the film reveals itself to be a feminized version of James Cameron's The Terminator. Maggie's mother, the little girl whom Peter, a teacher, kidnaps during his class field trip to the museum, needs protection from some nefarious force that doesn't want Maggie to be born. It's a variation on the premise from the 1984 thriller, in which Reese, knowing that the fate of his post-apocalyptical world depends on Sarah Connor's survival, shadows the buff cyborg, as man and machine fight over conflicting potentialities: the making or unmaking of John Connor, the future's only hope. First-person narration aside, susceptible as it is to fallibility, nevertheless, Maggie's story begins in a bathtub, submerged in water, without a stitch of clothing, which just happens to be the state of dress for Reese and the Terminator unit when they manifest themselves on the street in a downpour. Captured by police, Reese explains to the criminal psychologist in an interview that "nothing dead will go through" the time-displacement machine. Silberman wants proof, just like Lam. Maggie, stricken with amnesia upon her arrival, has no artifacts to orientate her, since, apparently, the quantum physics that is applicable to this diegesis shares the same properties as Reese's world. But Maggie has a memento, a tattoo. The ink on her ankle is intrinsic to projecting what the film leaves to your imagination. The 54 inscribed on Maggie's skin stands for the year 2054, references The Terminator(in addition, the anchor could be a Titanic denotation), in the sense that 27, as in 2027, the year of the rebels' victory and subsequent cyborg's revenge, numerically connects the two films through a proper factor. Without Reese's protection, Sarah becomes an easy target for the hyper-violent android. If she dies, the machines win. In Sound of My Voice, the climax suggests that Maggie is a revolutionary, not your garden variety cult leader, who, by the look of things, completes her mission. But what is that mission, exactly? If the Cameron film is a template for understanding the film, there must be a terminator who wants the mother dead. When Lorna plays informant for the black detective, she leaves the girl exposed, as Maggie, her adult daughter, gets dragged away in handcuffs. But is this woman really the law? We only see her in the field. There's no one to verify Maggie's alleged crimes and aliases. Arguably, the black detective is the terminator. Although Maggie, lies, it's a white lie; she's not hiding from the sun; she's hiding from her enemy. Labeled as a "militia" by the detective, Maggie's group could better be described as a resistance. The black detective will be back.… Collapse

   • Helpful? 1 of 2 users said Yes.
3. BrianMcCritic

   7

   A very low key movie, but a very good movie. The concept of a cult leader from the future is interesting and the film plays it at a very serious and somber level.… Expand

   • Helpful? 0 of 0 users said Yes.
4. GreatMartin

   2

   Is Maggie (Brit Marling) a 23 year old woman from the year 2054 or is she a scam artist on the run from the FBI? Is 8 year old Abigail (Avery Pohl) her mother? And why, and with what, does her father inject her foot with every night? Does each member, of what might be a cult, really have to learn that handshake that is so complicated were the actors chosen only by those who could accomplish it?
   
   Peter (Christopher Denham) and Lorna (Nicole Vicius) are a young couple in California who are would be filmmakers. They are planning to join a cult and make a film exposing it to the point that Peter swallows a radio transmitter to make recordings of what is said. They, and supposedly 7-8 others are put through a ruse each time they come to the meeting of being blindfolded, driven for 20 minutes, get naked and shower and then putting on robes before they get into that handshake and taken to a room where they meet Maggie. She wears a robe with a shawl and hoodie, is attached to an oxygen machine, eats food grown by her followers and has their blood sent into her body via various tubes for protein. At other times there is no oxygen tank in sight.
   
   At the beginning we go through psychology 101 where she has them vomit up, literally, their problems followed by, maybe, Peter being drawn in by her and foolishly agreeing to doing something that can cause him all sorts of problems. Peter seems to be more taken in by Maggie than Lorna is which causes them problems as a couple.
   
   Out of nowhere the camera moves to a woman (Davenia McFadden) on an airplane coming into Los Angeles, checking into a hotel, carrying all sorts of paraphernalia and then we go back to the cult meeting. In another 10-15 minute sequence there is a woman showing Lorna how to shoot a gun which, as far as I can tell, has nothing to do with the movie just as Peter stopping his car to urinate and, as far as I can tell, uses an asthma inhaler means anything except to extend the movie to 84 minutes.
   
   The director, Zal Batmanglij, who wrote the screenplay with Brit Marling, doesnâ… Expand

   • Helpful? 0 of 2 users said Yes.

See all 8 User Reviews