The Whisper Man premieres globally on Netflix on August 28.
Tragedy. Fathers desperate for connection with their sons and failing to find it. A string of murders that left a town shaken and an eerie nursery rhyme in their wake. Minds, homes, and families haunted. A cop desperate to stop the murder of a small boy before it happens. The Whisper Man has all the ingredients of a story that will chill your bones.
Based on the novel by Alex North, the film follows newly widowed crime novelist Tom Kennedy (Adam Scott), who is forced to reconcile with estranged father and retired detective Pete Willis (Robert De Niro) when his son Jake (Acston Luca Porto) goes missing. The kidnapping follows the pattern of a child abduction and murder spree that Willis solved when Tom was just a boy; the circumstances of Willis’ involvement with the crime and its perpetrator left the detective so traumatized that he ultimately abandoned his family.
The only person who might know who is behind these grisly acts — a butcher of innocents known as the Whisper Man — sits rotting in the jail cell where Willis put him. Desperate to find Jake and assigned to the case, Detective Amanda Beck (Michelle Monaghan) joins forces with Willis in a partnership that’s one of several contrivances meant to move the plot along. Unfortunately, that team doesn’t always track, and the circumstances surrounding the home that Tom rents are so full of wild coincidences that one is left utterly baffled.
The Whisper Man draws on a hodgepodge of influences, tropes, and plotlines from past thrillers, some more successful than others. James Patterson’s serial killer novels, Slender Man, The Silence of the Lambs, The Sixth Sense, The Black Phone, and A Nightmare on Elm Street’s Freddy Krueger all shape the story; there are even shades of the Pied Piper in the mix. It’s a potentially potent mix, but as much as The Whisper Man aims to shock, the largest reveal is telegraphed fairly early on, leaving the viewer to wait for the film to catch up.
The base premise is inherently horrific, and director James Ashcroft (Coming Home in the Dark) delivers unsettling images and auditory motifs, but the central relationships — Tom and his father; Jake and Tom; and Willis and his nemesis, the Whisper Man — aren’t fleshed out enough to leave a deep imprint because valuable screen time that could develop those emotional stakes is instead spent on a series of side stories and characters that mostly muddle the plot.
In a world where filmmakers regularly play with and reinvent the horror genre, this one feels like it was lifted from a time capsule. Retro can have its appeal, and The Whisper Man moves along at a brisk, fairly engaging pace. But the major outcomes are foreseeable, and the surprising moments are often just bits of plotting that make no sense. The film serves up curveballs that don’t land, befuddling character choices, obvious red herrings, and one wildly disturbing villain motivation that the film absolutely doesn’t earn. While serviceably directed with some effective and entertaining moments and a remarkably stacked cast that delivers a couple of scene-chewing interactions, The Whisper Man is too full of unexplored threads and illogical turns to pay off its promise.
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