A group of high schoolers blows a Death Whistle, summoning their own deaths. Find out if they will escape their fate in the all-too-familiar Whistle. Corin Hardy’s film hits Shudder this May.
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: an eclectic group of people finds themselves a cursed object or concept, and now they are under the timer until death finds and kills them in specific and often gruesome ways. Only through chasing down the history in some elaborate way can they avoid their fate. That’s Whistle, directed by Corin Hardy, where a group of high schoolers come across the titular cursed object and deal with the repercussions.
Whistle, sadly, is rote. There’s little special, outside of a couple of spectacular death scenes, in Owen Egerton’s screenplay to recommend away from the pack of films it reminds you of and makes you think “I should be watching that instead,” namely the six-film deep Final Destination franchise. It’s a tiny film with no characters, push, or truly anything to hang onto outside of a solid performance by Daphne Keen trying ot make the most of the underwritten lead, and a visual sense Corin Hardy has brought from his other films.
Keen is a favorite up-and-coming actor, and I’m glad to have her as the anchoring performance. She plays grounded toughness within the fantastical well. Whether it be three seasons as Lyra Belaqua in HBO/BBC’s His Dark Materials adaptation or X-23 in Logan and Deadpool & Wolverine, she’s a commanding presence, a serious young actor with a steely stare and depth. She does the best she can to give life to troubled teen Crystahthumum (yes, that’s her name): recovering after her father’s death, her overdose, and a fresh start at a cousin’s home in dreary, small-town Pennsylvania. She gives her stereotype: the troubled youth, something to watch. It’s all stereotypes, better than other cursed kids/object movie Tarot, but still pretty bland: Ali Skovbye’s Pretty Blonde, Jhaliel Swaby’s Jerk Jock, Peppy Girl played by Yellowjacket’s Sophie Nelisse, and Sky Yang’s Kinda-A-Loser Boy, round out the cast. Nick Frost of Edgar Wright movies continues his terrible horror streak (after Get Away, Krazy Home, and Black Cab), and Michelle Fairley of Game of Thrones gets a quick paycheck as an exposition giver.
Using the rote and familiar can work; we know how each Final Destination will go, but the hows behind it can elevate: just look at the Phillipou’s Talk To Me, which uses the cursed object narrative to talk about addiction and cycles of self-harm, and more. Yes, the lead has had these issues, but it’s nothing that feeds into the story as it is. And that’s the issue. There’s nothing else to make Whistle anything more than directly, what it is: people’s own deaths chasing them down after the Aztec Death Whistle (borrowed from Ghostbusters: Afterlife? Although Podcast’s blowing of it didn’t kill anyone) summons them.Missing the Rube Goldberg “oh, how will it happen” or the clear rules of others. It’s like Juon, a curse is on you, now just gotta wait until it catches up. Sure, there’s some talk of how to get around it, that is how these films always climax, but it’s half-assed and dumbly done (a special action of “oh no don’t do it!” before a grisly shredding is specifically inane). It’s Juon, it’s frustratingly random in how it works (a reason I don’t care for the series in the US or Japanese version), leading to frustrations from the viewer.
However, some of the deaths are noteworthy, separated from the action around them. Hardy can stage a scare. An extended stalk through a massive cornfield (though I refuse to believe a town on its last legs like this would have a HUGE Halloween/Harvest celebration to this degree; that said, great design) is scary and effective. The mentioned shredding and a car crash-based kill are impressive and nasty, leading to winces though the CG additions (or wholes). Each sequence cuts to solid tension, and pain is felt.
Even though I really didn’t like The Nun overall, Hardy has a fantastic visual style that made that film, his overall solid The Hallow, and even Whistle interesting to watch. He works well with the dark, setting an overcast and gloomy mood that pervades. Whether it be the Hellboy-esque hilltop abbey or the dying steel town, the atmosphere pervades.
Ultimately, Whistle is a lackluster riff on Final Destination without any of the drive that makes it stand out from the crowd, feeling like an underdone mixture of Final Destination, Talk to Me, and Juon. Daphne Keen acquits herself well for the lead, and some of the sequences outside of the text are well done. But Whistle blows its concept. Whistle hits Shudder May 8th.