Whistle fails to standout in teen-horror genre
Throughout human history, we have tried our best to seek an answer to one of life’s greatest inevitabilities: how are we going to die? For some, our eventual mortality is a thing of fate; something unmoving that we can’t seem to shake, no matter how much we look both ways before crossing the street or invest in supplements that promise long life and health. But for others, evading death becomes a source of constant existential worry. Corin Hardy’s Whistle takes this question of when and how I am going to die and turns it on its head as a group of high school students stumble upon an Aztec Death Whistle.
Whistle follows Chrys Willet (Dafne Keen), a new girl straight out of rehab whose father’s unexpected death surrounds her in spectacle, who finds herself thrown in detention alongside your typical Breakfast Club archetypal characters. Upon discovering a strange Aztec whistle in her assigned locker, Chrys quickly learns that she’s inherited the item from a boy who died tragically on school grounds. As the teens debate blowing the whistle, teacher Mr. Craven (Nick Frost) confiscates the death whistle, seeing it as a quick means to supplement his teaching salary via the antiquities black market. But before he has a chance to steal the whistle and profit, Mr. Craven blows the instrument, summoning a spirit that kills him in the manner he would eventually die: the man’s lung cancer progresses to a terminal point in a matter of seconds.
The next morning, the teens find the school mourning the untimely death of Mr. Craven, expressing great frustration and confusion at the prospect that he could die from Stage 4 lung cancer when looking perfectly healthy the night before. Reacquiring the whistle, the teens unleash its power at a party, unknowingly advancing their future deaths. While Whistle struggles with awkward dialogue and plotting that doesn’t exactly make us care about these characters, the film excels in its gore and violence, creatively exploring how quickly one’s fate can catch up to them. Be it old age siphoning the life out of a young homecoming queen or an inevitable overdose, the film’s special effects and cast triumph in their ability to play out the bizarre Final Destination-esque death sequences to a sickening effectiveness.
Whistle attempts to set itself apart by having a strong conceptual foundation, but the film’s script at times comes across as rigid and awkward. As the cast’s numbers dwindle, the film attempts to introduce a way of avoiding the death whistle’s effects with the whistle’s targets offsetting their fate by marking another with their blood. A burgeoning romance between Chrys and Ellie (Sophie Nélisse) forces them to battle with the moral implications of marking another, though the film does manage a bit of a loophole to prevent the entire cast from ending up dead before the film ends.
While Whistle’s unique concept and strong visuals play to its strengths, the film as a whole doesn’t feel like it’ll become a memorable teen horror film, not quite excelling in the script department nor successfully playing with its own formula.
Whistle can be streamed on Shudder.
