VOD film review: Voice from the Stone
Review Overview
Emilia Clarke
5Scares
3Story
4Mike Williams | On 28, Aug 2017
Director: Eric D Howell
Cast: Emilia Clarke, Marton Csokas, Caterina Murino
Certificate: 15
Watch Voice from the Stone: Sky Cinema / NOW / Apple TV (iTunes) / Prime Video (Buy/Rent) / TalkTalk TV / Google Play
Despite starring in one of the most successful TV shows of all time, it seems Emilia Clarke cannot catch a break. Her often stern, but ultimately morally driven, Daenerys Targaryen in HBO’s Game of Thrones has typecast her – much the way Harry Potter initially did to Daniel Radcliffe.
Spike Island, Terminator: Genisys, and Me Before You have been a mix of low-key indies and big box office flops, and Voice from the Stone is sadly no different. Set in 1950s Tuscany, Clarke’s Verena turns up as the new nanny for a family that suddenly loses its mother and is left with a distant, broken father and mute son. Aside from the sparsely plonked genre scare – although if truth be told it bears all the chills of a Mini Milk – there’s not much here that’ll have you covering your eyes other than the awful acting and misjudged pacing.
Like she did in the uncomfortably sappy Me Before You, Clarke overplays her character, with as much subtlety as a fire-breathing dragon. As a result, her character ends up coming across as laboriously two –dimensional. The biggest problem with Voice from the Stone, though, is its inability to engage. It fails to build any suspense and plods along at a woefully boring pace that leave it devoid of interest. Even an attempt at a raunchy sex scene is awkwardly conceived and acted – there’s no chemistry between the characters and no firm direction the story seems to move in.
Verena’s prim and proper, and her persona feels far too sterile and polished to believe she’s a real person. That’s not necessarily Clarke’s fault, because the script is uninventive and crawls along at a resigned speed to simply make it to the end. So you can imagine the slog it is for anyone actually watching.
As the narrative moves, we begin to feel like Verena is slipping into the role of the deceased mother, but the manner in which director Eric D. Howell and writers Andrew Shaw and Silvio Raffo present it is terribly unsubtle. As a result, the film feels too contrived, which sucks the life out of anything that’s attempting tension. So prepare yourself for plenty of lingering shots and a plethora of dialogue that replaces a gripping story and character depth. In short, it’s unbelievably dull.
Voice from the Stone is available to watch online on Amazon Prime Video as part of a Prime membership or a £5.99 monthly subscription.