Now Showing: Voice

 

Voice

Genre: Sci-Fi / Thriller / Musical

Director: Ana Lily Amirpour

Writer: Johnny Mercer

Cast: Rachel Zegler, Boyd Holbrook, Courtney Eaton, Jared Harris, Genevieve O'Reilly, Raul Esparza, Jake Weber

Plot: 2046

“Lilac Wine” - Rachel Zegler (Miley Cyrus cover)

Nestled in a back alley where holograms flicker, The Oubilette is one of the last live venues in the city. The velvet curtains are threadbare, the bartender sleepwalks through drinks. We glide past some washed-up brokers, sexless couples and dead eyed dreamers, until we find… her. Eva Calero (Rachel Zegler) - she is mid performance “Lilac Wine”, slow, aching. People seem to freeze with her words. One man laughs, then he sobs. A woman grips the table so hard her wine glass shatters. From the back of the room - Andre Durran (Jake Weber) - a record producer - stares at her, she seems to have cracked something inside him.

Eva walks home alone after her set. Stray voices echo the alleys beside her. She hears a note — a high-pitched harmonic — that makes her pause. It vanishes. She turns a corner and sees a subway violinist bleeding from the nose, playing the same melody she heard in her head. She hurries past.

Back in their cramped apartment, Roxie (Courtney Eaton) lounges on a velvet couch covered in thrifted clothes. She asks Eva what happened during the show — “people were acting like they got dosed.” Eva shrugs it off, says it’s just the music. Roxie watches her a little too closely. The conversation drifts to the past. Eva’s mother. Her father, the trumpet player who vanished. A song she can’t stop humming. Roxie leans forward. “Do you ever feel like your voice isn’t yours?” Eva just looks at Roxie.

Across town, Andre Durran steps off his penthouse balcony. His final voicemail to his assistant plays over the scene. It’s fragmented, obsessive. “It was in her voice. I heard my wife. I heard... God. Her voice is the key.” He falls soundlessly. On the sidewalk below, his blood pools beside a torn napkin from The Oubliette.

Detective Leo Marrin (Boyd Holbrook), smelling of cheap whiskey, surveys the rooftop. He plays the voicemail again. It doesn’t make sense. He stares at the napkin. The name “Eva Calero” is scrawled in cursive. He recognizes the club. He used to take his wife there. Before she vanished. Before the grief sank his soul into the gutter.

In her tiny room, she stares at the ceiling fan. It whirs. A note plays faintly in the background — not part of the city, not from the street — something internal. She dreams of her mother humming, then screaming. The ceiling cracks open in the dream and a thousand moths flutter down, pulsing with light in sync with her own heartbeat. She wakes with a gasp, hands around her throat.

Roxie, unsettled by Eva’s sleep, visits an underground data haven called the Library of Echoes — a sonic archive run by conspiracy theorists and sound engineers. The space is dim, full of old cassettes, reel-to-reels, and analog signal disruptors. A clerk plays her a file called “Lost Frequencies – Pattern 4B.” As the tones hiss through the speaker, Roxie bleeds from her ear. She stumbles out with the word “transmitter” scratched onto a post-it. Behind her, an old man mutters, “The last one sang herself to death in Berlin.”

In a sterile office that doesn’t officially exist, Agent Burke (Genevieve O’Reilly) places Andre Durran’s death certificate in a manila folder marked “Pattern 4B.” His assistant notes, “Third incident this quarter involving vocal trigger.” Burke replies coldly: “No... this one’s different.” A profile photo of Eva loads on his holoscreen. “We found our transmitter.”

The next night, Eva returns to The Oubliette. Something compels her. She barely remembers walking there. Roxie begs her not to go onstage. Eva ignores her. A spotlight falls like a blade. She sings an old bolero, but her voice warps, it has an almost surreal quality. The crowd stiffens, one of the men collapses to his knees in ecstasy. Eva closes her eyes mid-verse. A single tear rolls down her cheek as the air around her vibrates like it's alive. A hum lingers even after the lights die. The club is silent but no one claps. Eva walks offstage, shaken. Somewhere deep in the club’s underbelly, a speaker buzzes — playing her voice backward. It sounds like a name.

At a glossy rehearsal studio deep in the city’s Arts District, Maestro Voss (Jared Harris) leans over the piano like a spider playing God. He watches Eva sing scales, his fingers twitching with every sustained note. She’s flawless, but it’s not her control that excites him — it’s the instability beneath it. Voss offers her a residency, the chance to “explore the physics of emotion.” She hesitates. He says, “You don’t sing songs, Eva. You open people up.” He places a contract in front of her — she signs with a trembling hand. Outside, a sudden gust of wind knocks over a streetlight and the bulb bursts.

In his cluttered office, Leo Marrin pins photos of unexplained deaths and mental breakdowns to his corkboard — all tied to performances. The victims speak of voices in their heads before dying. One sketch, drawn by a surviving witness, resembles Eva onstage with blank eyes. Leo visits The Oubliette. He doesn’t approach her. Just watches from the shadows. Later, he traces her lineage and stumbles across a sealed military file under the name “S. Calero.” He breaks into an archive and listens to a degraded reel-to-reel tape. The voice on it sings three notes — and he blacks out.

Back at the apartment, Roxie grows more paranoid. She finds a metronome ticking on its own. Her headphones buzz with static whenever Eva speaks. Roxie records her sleep talk — Eva sings in her dreams, murmuring melodies that don’t exist. When she confronts Eva, the room seems to pulse. Roxie slaps her. Eva blinks like she just woke up. Roxie flees the apartment, whispering to herself: “That’s not her anymore.”

“Everything in its Right Place” - Radiohead

Agent Burke sits in a glass box floating above a sonic testing chamber. Beneath her, prisoners wear neural headphones, reacting violently to synthesized tones. She’s building a map of human susceptibility — and Eva’s voice is the missing key. A technician shows her an audio analysis of Eva’s last performance: “There’s an embedded waveform below 19 hertz — something primal.” Burke orders surveillance increases.

“I Put a Spell On You” - Rachel Zegler (Cami Clune Cover)

Maestro Voss invites Eva to a private club — members only, rich men with dying eyes and drink menus printed in Braille. Eva performs a stripped-down version of “I Put a Spell on You.” The crowd doesn’t clap. They shudder. One man vomits quietly. Another whispers to Voss: “Can you mass produce her?” Eva hears it. She leaves the stage mid-song. In the alley, she finds Roxie waiting. They argue — words like “exploited,” “weaponized,” “sick.” Roxie tries to hug her. Eva gently hums a single low note — Roxie freezes in place. Eva walks away. Her friend collapses in the rain behind her.

“No Stars” - Rachel Zegler (Rebekah Del Rio)

Eva, shaken from the club and the confrontation with Roxie, stumbles into an abandoned vocal isolation booth in a forgotten theater. She sings aimlessly — lullabies, broken jazz scats, notes with no melody. But something answers. A ghost harmony from within the walls. She begins to sing in a call-and-response with herself. As she builds to a crescendo, the walls crack slightly. A mirror nearby splinters. She screams. Then silence. Her breath fogs the glass. She's afraid of her own sound.

Leo’s search leads him to a decaying jazz bar in a forgotten borough. There, an old man plays trumpet — off-key, but with pain so deep it hums. Sebastian Calero (Raul Esparza), Eva’s father, eyes Leo without surprise. He knows why he’s there. Inside his case are reels, letters, and photos — experiments in sound done for the U.S. military during the war. “They wanted a song that could end a revolution before it began.” He says Eva’s mother could hear things no one else could — until she went mad. Leo asks, “Is Eva dangerous?” Sebastian replies, “Only if she doesn’t choose.”

In a soundproof elevator lined with acoustic foam, Agent Burke visits Maestro Voss under Bureau orders. She offers government funding, not just for emotional compliance, but for battlefield application. “We can clear a building with a hymn.” Voss looks fascinated but offended. “I am sculpting divinity,” he says. Burke replies, “You’re sculpting obedience.” A moment of tension lingers. He accepts the offer, but only if he controls Eva’s access and sessions. They shake hands. Her parting words: “Keep her pliable.”

Maestro Voss unveils his plan. Eva is strapped into a chair in a hidden studio. Electrodes, tuning forks, harmonic fields surround her. He speaks to an unseen board of investors: “She is not the singer. She is the instrument. With her tones mapped, we can manufacture emotional compliance.” Eva whispers that she wants out. Voss plays back a clip of her own voice: a love song twisted into a siren’s wail. The technicians begin syncing her heartbeat to a synthetic metronome. The lights flicker.

“Disintegration Anxiety” - Explosions in the Sky

In the moment of total submission, Eva begins to sing under her breath — not to control, but to mourn. She sings a lullaby her mother used to hum. The resonance shatters the neural loop. The glass warps. Technicians scream. Voss is bleeding from his nose. Eva escapes through a fire door as the power dies across the building. Sirens rise in the distance. Her voice, now untethered, echoes through the city like a ghost note.

Agent Burke watches grainy footage of Eva escaping, her expression unreadable. Eva moves through the city, her voice now unstable. Streetlights crackle when she exhales. Radios burst into static when she enters a room. In a midnight marketplace, children stop playing and stare as she hums a few simple bars. She vanishes into the fog. The Bureau has placed her on a "soft perimeter" watchlist — but Burke holds off on capture. She wants one last performance. One that can be captured, weaponized and marketed. Eva continues fleeing through the back alleys of the city. She mutters to herself, and windows crack as she passes.

“Mary Magdalene” - Rachel Zegler (FKA Twigs)

She finds temporary refuge in an abandoned greenhouse, wrapping herself in an old opera coat. For the first time, she sings not to affect others but to ground herself. A fragile melody. She sobs mid-song. But even here, she’s not alone. A surveillance drone hums above. Then she is grabbed.

Inside an interrogation room padded like a recording booth, Burke plays Eva footage of Roxie — unconscious in a hospital bed, tubes down her throat. “You did that,” Burke says, flatly. “But you can undo it.” Eva doesn’t respond. “Come back. Perform for us once. And she lives.” Eva asks, “And then I’m free?” Burke just looks at her. “You’ll be remembered - one way or another.”

Leo finds Sebastian Calero nursing a bleeding hand in his apartment — he tried to burn his old recordings but couldn’t finish. He admits he once offered his daughter’s lullabies to military scientists. Leo convinces him that the only way to redeem himself is to stop Maestro Voss. Together, they break into Voss’s lab, where they find rows of silenced singers — test subjects — kept under sedation, their voices bottled in analog reels. Sebastian pockets one labeled “Eva – Harmony #7.” He listens to it in horror. It’s not just a tone. It’s her screaming.

The Bureau funds Voss’s “private performance” under the guise of an experimental gala. World leaders, tech moguls, and military figures attend in tuxedos that glow faintly under blacklight. The venue is an abandoned opera house where the ceiling has caved in, and vines now drape over chandeliers like funeral garlands. Eva, coerced, is dressed in an iridescent gown wired with biometric sensors. As the technicians finish wiring her up, Maestro Voss gently touches her shoulder. “No pain this time,” he says. She doesn’t respond. But her fingers tap out a rhythm on her thigh — the same lullaby from her dream.

In her hospital bed, Roxie flinches at a sound no one else hears — three soft notes. A nurse dismisses it but Roxie’s eyes widen. She begins humming, faintly, then louder, until the light above her flickers. In a surge of adrenaline, she unplugs her IV and escapes into the night, still humming the counter-melody.

“Song to the Siren” - (Rachel Zegler) This Mortal Coil

Eva stands alone under a fractured spotlight. The audience hushes. She begins to sing. The melody is simple, pristine, but under it flows another sound — low, building. One by one, the elite crowd slumps in their chairs. Tears. Laughter. Violence. Faint murmuring becomes full-blown screaming. Burke watches from the control booth, expressionless. “It works,” she says.

She begins layering the melody with her mother’s lullaby — the same one that first shattered the neural loop. The song is no longer weaponized, but intimate. Messy. Human. The feedback warps the biometric sensors. Sparks fly. The chandeliers crash to the floor. Glass rains like crystal rain. Leo bursts into the mezzanine and screams her name. Eva holds the final note, eyes closed, tears streaming.

In the control room, Voss tries to override the sequence. But Eva’s song shifts again — it includes a note only he hears. A private harmony. A buried guilt. He collapses, clutching his ears. He sees images: the girls he silenced, the men he served. His eyes roll back. His body convulses. Then stillness. Death.

Rather than flee, Agent Burke removes her earpiece and steps onto the stage. She listens fully, willingly. The note hits her — the grief, the beauty, the chaos. She weeps, hands at her sides, and walks slowly into the fire that now burns across the set. Her silhouette disappears into the smoke.

Weeks later. Roxie, bandaged and worn, breaks into a pirate radio tower outside the city. She wires an analog board to transmit something new: the reel labeled “Eva – Harmony #1,” but reversed. She splices it with her own voice — singing a lullaby in counter-melody. When it plays, across rooftops and static-filled air, the city does not tremble. It breathes. A child stops crying. A neon billboard flickers off. A cat sleeps. Roxie leans back and whispers, “You’re free now.”

The opera house burns with Sebastian pulling Leo out just in time. Eva is nowhere to be found. Her voice echoes in the smoke — not terrified, not commanding — but free. No body is recovered. No final song released. The Bureau denies everything.

Somewhere distant, in an anonymous town, a radio crackles to life on a dusty shelf. A familiar voice hums a few quiet notes. The air stills. A vase trembles slightly. Then silence.

Cut to black.