Review by Eric Hillis
Directed by: Corin Hardy
Starring: Dafne Keen, Sophie Nélisse, Sky Yang, Jhaleil Swaby, Ali Skovbye, Percy Hynes White, Michelle Fairley, Nick Frost
If you fed the screenplays of Final Destination, It Follows, Smile and Clown in a Cornfield through a woodchipper and attempted to paste them back together into a single script, you might end up with something close to director Corin Hardy and screenwriter Owen Egerton's Whistle. It's a derivative mashup of teen horror and "curse horror" clichés, albeit one that seems to wilfully embrace its expected caricatures and plot beats. It boasts a potentially great hook that deserves a much better film. Whistle doesn't entirely blow, but Hardy fails to get a satisfying tune out of this concept.
One thing Whistle has going for it is the most Metal!!! horror movie prop since that hand sculpture from Talk to Me, an Aztec death whistle that finds its way into the high school of a small American town. In a prologue we watch as a young basketball star destroys the artefact, only to be burnt alive in the locker room shower by a flaming ghoul.
We then meet our moody final girl Chrys, played by a sleepwalking Dafne Keen. Following the death of her father and a stint in drug rehab, Chrys moves in with her nerdy cousin Rel (Sky Yang), who seems to live in a house with no adults. The collection of teen horror stereotypes is completed by potential love interest Ellie (Sophie Nélisse), dumb blonde Grace (Ali Skovbye) and her obnoxious jock boyfriend Dean (Jhaleil Swaby).
When she inherits the school locker vacated by the previously immolated basketball player, Chrys discovers the whistle, now fully intact. Grace decides to blow it for the lols and the group almost lose their ear drums. But that's the least of their troubles. Blowing the whistle activates a curse that sees anyone who hears it visited and murdered by the version of themselves from the time of their death. One by one, the kids succumb to their terrible fates.
As horror movie setups go, that should be a winner. It takes the idea of knowing your death is imminent from the likes of The Ring, Final Destination and Smile and adds an even more disturbing element of being killed by your future dying self. But it's an idea that belongs in a more sombre, dare I say "elevated" horror movie of the J-horror variety, one willing to really dig into the existential dread of such a notion. Here it's just a way to kill off some thinly drawn teens.
It doesn't help that the deaths are rendered in unconvincing CG. It's a neat idea that the characters are torn apart in the manner they would have been had their full lives played out as planned. For example, one kid gets shredded in a steel mill, and we see his body squished by an invisible shredder. But if there's one thing horror fans roll their eyes at it's CG blood, and there are gallons of digital sangria used here. Whistle is yet another modern horror movie that will have you pining for the days of bone-crunching practical FX. Just think what Rick Baker, Rob Bottin or Screaming Mad George might have made of this concept!
British director Hardy seems to enjoy leaning into the clichés of the American teen horror, doubling down on its backdrop of chaotic high school corridors, infeasibly elaborate Halloween celebrations and underage drunks sneaking in and out of bedroom windows. The influence of '80s horror is all over Whistle, right down to a "don't do drugs kids!" message that seems particularly quaint now.
As Olwen Fouéré was presumably busy, Michelle Fairley pops up in the standard role of the one person who is fully au fait with the lore of the curse and knows how to defeat it. The usually charming Percy Hynes White (recently the highlight of My Old Ass and I Like Movies) is miscast in the laughably unconvincing role of a drug-dealing youth pastor. Practically everyone here has done good work in the past, but whether in front of or behind the camera, they all seem content with putting in the bare minimum of effort. A fun post-credits scene suggests a possible sequel. As someone who feels obliged to see every movie of this nature, my fate unfortunately seems pre-ordained.
Whistle is in UK/ROI cinemas from February 13th.
