WHISTLE Review: An Unlikely Group Of Teens Fight Their Own Mortality

Two things are inevitable in this world: death, and horror films that really want you to know that they’ve seen other horror films. Director Corin Hardy’s Whistle is a little bit of both, a throwback to a horror of a less serious age jam-packed with gory death scenes that occasionally surprise, but more frequently fall flat due to an overreliance on mediocre computer-generated graphics.

 Six months after the mysterious spontaneous combustion of a high school basketball hero, his old locker is issued to goth-adjacent troubled teen transfer student, Chrys (Dafne Keen, short for Chrysanthemum, poor kid. She’s attempting to re-enter society by joining her cool cousin Rel (Sky Yang) at Pellington High, but the school’s choice to reallocate the popular dead boy’s locker irks some of his jock pals, who immediately jump into Chrys’s business and make things uncomfortable.

Hanging out with the jocks is super hottie, Ellie (Sophie Nélisse), who catches our shy heroine’s eye and soon becomes the focal point of her waking thoughts, an unnecessary diversion that weighs down an already flimsy plot. Upon exploring her new locker, Chrys discovers a strange pre-Colombian artifact that turns out to be an Aztec Death Whistle, which does pretty much what you’d expect. So, what other choice is there in a film like this but to put your lips together and blow. What could possibly go wrong.

Everything, obviously.

The actual mechanism of death brought about by the whistle’s activation is actually kind of clever. I won’t give away too much, but any dedicated horror fan will immediately be able to shout out a number of obvious references throughout the film. The most obvious influence here is the Final Destination series, which would’ve been a cool retro shout out if that series hadn’t released one of its finest entries just a few months ago, making Whistle feel more like an uninspired copy than a true homage.

Though Final Destination is the most obvious reference in Whistle, it’s far from the only one, there are shades of A Nightmare on Elm Street, the meta-commentary of Scream, as well as blatant shout outs to classical and current horror filmmakers through the film. While it may seem cute at first, it quickly becomes tedious and feels like an attempted shortcut to goodwill without making the effort to earn it.

Chrys, Rel, and Ellie are the primary focuses here, but Whistle quickly turns into a Breakfast Club situation when all of the jock bullies who harass Chrys almost immediately turn into best buds who hang out in spite of their differences. She is the Ally Sheedy to their Emilio Estevezes (thankfully there is no makeover here, but the similarities are too obvious to ignore). This sudden change of heart is just one of a dozen inconsistencies that strain the film’s credulity in a way that really made it tough to take seriously.

Between the unlikely friendships that materialize out of nowhere, the frequent and nonsensical coincidences that feel like a script that wrote itself into a corner and couldn’t find a graceful way out, and a human villain in the form of a cartoonishly diabolical youth pastor/dope dealer, who serves almost no narrative purpose, Whistle is a hot mess of a movie. It is almost worth the watch for some of the death scenes, except for the fact that the gore is almost entirely composed of mid-tier CGI and almost no practical FX work, rendering its emotional and visceral impact almost wafer thin.

There is a good idea in here, though the film seems to be fighting against it by constraining to action to high school students who don’t act like actual high school students. Move this story to a college campus and it gets a fighting chance, but here everything feels more than a little false and contrived.

Whistle is a textbook case of “turn off your brain and enjoy the ride”, but even in that case, there are enough tonal irregularities, miraculous plot devices, and shaky CG showcases (including the opening immolation) that it never quite rises to the level of guilty pleasure. The leads put in solid performances, but even they can’t hold this shaky construction together. Unfortunately, this Whistle is more of a sad trombone.