Whistle, 2026.
Directed by Corin Hardy.
Starring Dafne Keen, Sophie Nélisse, Sky Yang, Jhaleil Swaby, Alissa Skovbye, Percy Hynes White, Michelle Fairley, Nick Frost, Janaya Stephens, Lanette Ware, Mika Amonsen, Stephen Kalyn, Troy James, Cameron Norris, Toria Summerville, Christine Sahely, Mikayla Kong, Matthew MacCallum, Ray Francis, Kalie Hunter, Brandon James Sim, Michael Koras, and Clayton Scott.
SYNOPSIS:
A misfit group of unwitting high school students stumble upon a cursed object, an ancient Aztec Death Whistle. They discover that blowing the whistle and the terrifying sound it emits will summon their future deaths to hunt them down.
Director Corin Hardy (and screenwriter Owen Egerton) blew it: Whistle, which unquestionably rips off other familiar horror ideas to an embarrassing degree, is terrible. Perhaps the worst part is that even for a movie, nothing here (or anything these characters do) makes a lick of sense. It’s a film that concludes with the message that perhaps death is not the enemy (whatever that means), then launches into an end-credits stinger so outrageous in its stupidity that it blows away every other idiotic creative decision before it while undercutting that confusing message.
For now, let’s go back to the beginning: a high school student is found mysteriously dead from severe burns after a local basketball game where we repeatedly see emaciated, ghastly looking demonic entity staring down one particular player (his nickname “Horse” is written on the back of his jersey rather than his surname, which is not only egregiously annoying but one of many signs that these filmmakers simply don’t know anything about anything) on the court before eventually viscerally shoving its hand into the teenager’s body in the locker room showers, causing his death.
Flash forward six months, and new student Chrys (Logan‘s Dafne Keen, surely deserving better than this generic material) gets a rundown on this lore when she discovers on her first day that she has Horse’s locker. Inside that locker is the ancient Aztec relic whistle that, when blown, puts a death trap in motion for anyone who is in range to hear it, one that is based on how they will inevitably die in the future (the only decently clever spin on familiarity this film has). He had this because his mom is a total quack played by Michelle Fairley. What this means is that a kid who not only goes to this school but also dies there never had their locker cleaned out. This writer spent the next 90 minutes completely hung up on that absurd contrivance. An answer is eventually given, and it is lame, too.
Later on, there is a halfhearted attempt at an explanation of the coroner’s reports, detailing that apparently no one cares about the bizarre findings in them. Even the film bizarrely doesn’t explain the gimmick behind the whistle until multiple characters have already died, so there is a scene in which one of those demonic entities plunges his hand into Nick Frost’s teacher’s body, only to lose his hair while dying. It is not scary but rather utterly hilarious without the context of what’s happening. When the rules are explained, the filmmakers change them anyway in a way that comes across as cheating, so that whatever needs to happen can happen. That might have been forgivable if the deaths weren’t mostly CGI messes that overdo the gore and blood to compensate for shortcomings elsewhere.
As for the story, it centers on Chrys moving in with her overtly extroverted and annoying cousin, Rel (Sky Yang), following some tragedy involving both her and her dad that led to the death of the latter. She is looking for a fresh start, and instantly becomes smitten with Ella (Sophie Nélisse). Meanwhile, Rel has his heart set on childhood friend Grace (Alissa Skovbye), who sees him as just a friend and is currently in a bad-boy phase. There is a sequence at a Halloween fair, complete with everyone dressed up in ridiculous-looking costumes, that only makes all of this somehow more comical. Elsewhere is a preacher’s son whom everyone hates for having sold drugs and gotten someone killed.
Other noteworthy, hilarious scenes include an all-too-convenient eBay stand-in for uncovered Aztec relics, where they can be marked by their condition with a simple button press. Even the romance that begins to develop between Chrys and Ella is rushed and feels false, as if the filmmakers just wanted to give the characters something to do while nervously knowing that any one of them could die next.
Some credit is in order: there are real people playing doppelgängers of the attacking entities, even if they are unnecessarily overused and digitally enhanced, doing more harm than good. Spotty as the visual effects are, a couple of the deaths are, as mentioned, grotesque, though it often feels as if the filmmakers didn’t put much imaginative thought into how these characters would die in the future. Only one of them feels genuinely inspired, but again, it looks far too choppy and relies on excessive bodily harm and blood to elicit a reaction. That’s the only way Whistle can get a rise out of viewers, and even then, it is nothing to blow the whistle home about.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ / Movie: ★ ★
Robert Kojder
