Quartile rating: 6/10 · 1 rating
Verena is a nurse who arrives at an old mansion in Italy to help a young boy who has fallen silent since the sudden passing of his mother.
Voice from the Stone is a visually sumptuous gothic atmospheric thriller set in 1950s Tuscany, with Roger Ballen-esque stone textures and moody mansion photography that genuinely elevate the material. Emilia Clarke gives a committed performance and the Italian setting is beautifully rendered by cinematographer Shelly Johnson. However, the plot is derivative gothic melodrama — echoing Rebecca and The Others without adding much new — and the narrative threads involving the mute boy, the sculptor father, and the supernatural stone mythology never coalesce into a satisfying whole. The ending in particular feels muddled and undercooked, failing to deliver on the atmospheric promise built earlier. Novelty suffers for being a fairly by-the-numbers gothic romance despite its handsome production.