Claudia Puig, USA TODAY

Sweetness and evil co-exist eccentrically in the darkly comic genre-bending film.

One of the weirder, much-discussed comedies of the festival is The Voices, a grisly, dark comedy that features a terrific performance by Ryan Reynolds as a likable factory worker who hears advice from his pet dog and cat and morphs into a scary serial killer.

“The script is insane,” says co-star Anna Kendrick, adding that she had wanted to work with writer-director Marjane Satrapi since reading her graphic novel Persepolis, which was made into a film in 2007 and nominated for an animated-feature Oscar.

Indeed, Satrapi initially resisted any gruesome shots, then succumbed to showing Reynolds’ character slicing and dicing the body parts of his female co-workers and stowing them away neatly in plastic containers.

“I didn’t know I was this attracted to gore and blood,” says the Iranian-born Satrapi. “My mother told me ‘You are sick in the head.’ ”

Reynolds plays Jerry, a nebbishy guy who works in the packing department of a large company. But he’s descending into madness. First hint: He talks with his dog and cat — and they talk back. His cat Mr. Whiskers has a nasty temperament and a feisty Scottish burr, goading Reynolds’ character to do evil and kill. Bosco, the dog, is deep-voiced and decent. The pooch, a Mastiff mix, says things like “I earned the right to be called a good boy.”

Reynolds does the voice of the dog and cat, and also performs in an elaborate song-and-dance sequence for the closing credits, which features Kendrick, Gemma Arterton and a singing, dancing Jesus.

But, for all his accomplishments and ability to play a deranged killer, Reynolds had one strange phobia.

It had nothing to do with carnage, but involved working so closely with house pets.

Says Satrapi: “Ryan is scared of cats.”

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