Whistle
2 stars (out of 4)
Starring Dafne Keen, Sophie Nélisse, Sky Yang, Jhaliel Swaby, Ali Skovbye, and Percy Hynes White
Language: English
Running time: 97 minutes
Available: In theaters
I prefer not to be terrified. I dislike extravagant gore on screen. I hate seeing pets, the elderly, disabled people, and other defenseless beings face imminent demise. I never want to scream in shock in a public theater. That’s why Whistle, the new supernatural horror release from IFC/Shudder, is the perfect thriller for me. There’s only one concern.
Whistle simply isn’t very scary. For a horror movie, that’s an existential problem.
Don’t get me wrong. There is some splendid SFX work, with just enough blood to meet the minimum horror-genre requirements. And as with any horror film, there are many of the tropes you’d expect: an evil scourge from an ancient culture; low lighting in situations where a normal person would simply switch on the overhead lights; a brave teenager becoming a warrior against the supernatural foe; old women warning about impending doom; and, of course, frequent jump scares that quickly become repetitive.
Chrysanthemum “Chrys” Willett (a subdued but delightful Dafne Keen) is shipped off from Chicago to her cousin’s house in some Midwestern steel town, where the smokestacks stipple the skyline and the most fun to be had is driving drunk with your buddies.
According to rumor, Chrys is a drug-rehab alumna who killed her father. With her straight black hair, excessive eye shadow, and tattoos, she looks the part: a Goth Girl from the big city gone bad, now doing enforced penance in Nowheresville, USA.
But there’s something wrong. She’s assigned the high school book locker that once belonged to the late Mason “Horse” Raymore, a beloved varsity hoopster who has recently died under, shall we say, mysterious circumstances. The senior-class cool kids give Chrys a hard time about taking over their dead friend’s locker. As they’re chased away by Mr. Craven, the history teacher, Chrys finds, among the locker detritus, a unique stone container holding a spooky-looking whistle. More erudite horror fans will recognize it as an Aztec Death Whistle, which is apparently a real thing.
Here’s the trouble: Blow that whistle, and anyone within earshot of its clamorous, cacophonic call is unlikely to make it to Act III.
Chrys, as we discover, did not actually kill her father, yet overwhelming guilt consumes her. Among her dearest possessions is papa’s collection of vintage vinyl, the songs from which provide some of the more satisfying selections from the soundtrack. In fact, God bless whoever selected Whistle’s tunes: When Chrys and her pal Ellie Gains (Sophie Nélisse) enter the spooky Raymore mansion to return Mason’s locker contents to his very creepy grandma, the sound scratching out from a Victrola is the chilling “St. James Infirmary” by Cab Calloway and his orchestra (the 1941 version, if I’m not mistaken).
I’m goin’ down to St. James Infirmary
See my baby there
She’s stretched out on a long white table
She’s so sweet, so cold, so fair
Just as you can’t unring a bell, you can’t unhear an Aztec Death Whistle, presumably, because the young folks begin dropping like out-of-shape 18-year-olds at Marine Corps boot camp on a 95-degree day in August.
Director Colin Hardy and screenwriter Owen Egerton have devised an amusing array of fatal factors for the cast members’ final outs. And it’s all because of the Enchoca, the whistle, which demands blood!
Tense moments? Oh sure. Perhaps the most unnerving, not to say terrifying (because Whistle never achieves such heights), involves Chrys’s friend Grace (Ali Skovbye) being chased through a hay-bale maze at the annual Harvest Festival. (One can’t help but wonder what there is to harvest in the pollution-thick factory town.) The deathly pursuit provides one of the more satisfying thrills of the entire picture.
Not to be picky, but some story inconsistencies aren’t explained:
* The star basketball player in the opening sequence destroys the Enchoca, yet weeks later, it returns, fully intact, to his old book locker. How?
* An overweight bearded man with a full head of hair works late, then is discovered dead by his colleagues the next morning, a bald, beardless, emaciated corpse. Do they call the police? No, they stage a memorial service, seemingly only an hour after someone has sniffed the fetid aroma of bodily corruption emanating from the man’s darkened door. How can we believe this?
After one of the characters dies, someone has spray-painted “Death Lives” on a nearby wall. Who? How? Why? None of these questions, in the minds of the director and screenwriter, require answers. Hey, it’s supernatural horror! We can do whatever we want.
Whistle is an earnest movie that buys into the accepted horror aesthetics, but rarely pushes the envelope enough to truly frighten the audience. Despite a team of capable --even laudable--young actors, it fails to achieve something more than average. Date night movie? Sure thing. Perfect, in fact. Horror geeks’ night out? Nah.
Whether you enjoy the film or not, stick around for the surprising kicker in the mid-credits sequence.
In the end, Whistle presents a novel concept, a unique take on the genre’s clichés, but fails to achieve the next-level twists and drop-dead shocks that might have taken this at-times charming but ineffective chiller to the next level.
Author Bio:
Mark Orwoll writes about film and travel for Highbrow Magazine.
For Highbrow Magazine