ALL hail rising US star Brit Marling, the 28-year-old actress who co-wrote and takes the lead in this coolly precise sci-fi-inflected thriller about a cult leader who claims to have dropped in from the future.
As Maggie, effortless queen of a cramped, closely guarded basement in the San Fernando Valley, Marling looks uncannily like Julia Roberts, all pretty eyes and strong jaw. We understand why the charismatic Maggie’s followers fall for her, just as we understand exactly why hipster couple Peter and Lorna (Christopher Denham and Nicole Vicius), the two new recruits, are really there to expose her as a fraud.
Peter and Lorna’s bourgeois, rootless existence is perfectly caught: his dead-end job at a private school, her independent wealth. They’re the kind of buttoned-up, tightly strung characters who would normally exist on the margins of a story, which makes it all the more refreshing to dwell on their pain.
True, the pair’s attempts to secretly film Maggie are sometimes hard to swallow, and the film’s ending is somewhat abrupt. But no matter.
As with 2007’s small gem, The Nines, Sound of My Voice is proof that you can create nerve-scraping twilight zones without A-list stars or CGI. One scene (involving The Cranberries hit, Dreams) is especially intense. A message for Brit Marling: O, great one, what’s next?
