‘Whistle’ Review: Sound and Fury Signifying Mostly Nothing
With an intriguing young cast, and a terrifying premise, Shudder’s ‘Whistle’ shouldn’t just be background noise. But it is.
There are plenty of horror films where death is the central antagonist. Hell, that’s the entire premise of the Final Destination films, where a sadistic death rather than giving you a heart-attack, creates Rube Goldberg machines to creatively find a way to air-canon a spork into your jugular while you inexplicably slip on Windex. Or often it is the very embodiment of death, whether it be an army of Romero-era undead or Jason Voorhees slowly stalking their victims with an unstoppable thirst.
But imagine that your death, regardless of what it might be, comes to you this very day. Regardless if that death was meant for you tomorrow or 60 years from now. That death comes to you and kills you in the manner you are intended to die in. A tantalizing if not new twist on the concept. This is the world of Shudder’s new relatively indie-horror, ‘Whistle’. The titular hoot-maker is truly moot, as it serves merely as the critical incident to jump start death’s hunt towards its victims, and the quickly gets passed on inexplicably like the Jumanji board game.
The film centers around Chrys (Dafne Keene) and Ellie (Yellowjacket’s Sophie Nélisse) as high school students who stumble upon an Aztec death whistle, as one does, stashed in Chrys’ locker after a tragedy befell one of the star athletes at their high school. That particular young man inexplicably burst into flame while in the shower, as one does, and his death rightfully freaked out the entire community, while authorities merely blamed a gas leak.
As the adept lead of the film, and identifiable final girl, Chrys intelligently does not immediately blow into the whistle, but instead puts in her backpack and brings it to detention, as one does.
While in detention, the ragtag group of teens we’re forced to follow creates a row by exclaiming the whistle must be drug paraphernalia, which naturally forces Mr. Craven’s (Nick Frost) hand, and naturally, Mr. Craven confiscates the whistle. What the clearly underpaid teacher (perhaps the most realistic thing about this film) is not forced to do, is try and sell the artifact on some sort of eBay. Of course, if the whistle is in working order, which the website specifically asks, (because, of course it would,) it’s worth more, and so Craven sets the film, and death, in motion.
While trivial in its predictability for the first act, there was a modicum of intrigue that the film rapidly wasted within 20 minutes. The contrivance to get the group together has been done dozens of times before, and so quickly at the start of the film, you already disconnect with it before it even gets moving. The most intriguing thing was that at first blow - the whistle is not heard by the audience. Instead it has, rightfully so, an almost supernatural mystery to it, and merely shatters glass surrounding Craven. This was a great choice by the filmmakers, as it was almost as if they were asking what does death sound like? But that is perhaps giving the film far too much credit.
The caricatures, and that is not a misprint that the film centres around is sadly just as poorly manufactured. Within the group is the cocky teen-jock, acting far beyond his years, and clearly played by a man in his mid-twenties (Jhaleil Swaby). This is yet another Hollywood contrivance that takes this high school teacher of 17 years right out of a film. It is absolutely possible that these actors, who are of the right age, couldn’t be college students instead. The only change would be that perhaps writer Owen Egerton would have to actually think of a reason the group gets together in the first place rather than the easy ‘they all get detention’ answer. It would make a lot more sense in terms of Craven being an Aztec expert as well, as I’m certain several poorly funded high schools across America aren’t teaching ancient Meso-American studies. The other characters that populate the story are the beautiful armcandy girlfriend to accompany the jock, the joker (which in most cases is a pothead, and in this case, what else would he be?) and the loner with a dark past who never lets anyone in.
Credit does need to go to the cast who do their best with a fairly banal film. The two leads Keene and Nélisse do infuse a rather safe story with some much needed heart, which is refreshing because otherwise the characters are so one-dimensional no audience member can really care about their fate.
The thrills are sadly banal as well. Since most audience members are going to see this on Shudder, on the small screen, the film was better suited to try and overreach its limitations, not depend on the safety of tropes. While the concept is certainly a small twist on the death-as-a-hunter convention, the final deaths are rarely shocking and the build up is almost non-existent. Having the very embodiment of their death chasing them down is interesting, as the production design team must have had fun with trying to demonize and anthropomorphize something like cancer or old age. That was undoubtedly the most thought provoking aspect of a film that otherwise doesn’t give the concept enough thought to become bigger than it could be. It never attempts to escape the most simple version of the story and, in turn, the film seems small.