‘Whistle’ Movie Review: Cursed Object Horror Movie Doesn’t Blow It
Photo from Independent Film Company
From Jeremy Kibler
In the land of horror movies, strange-looking objects notoriously tend to be cursed, making it hard to believe that anybody (let alone high schoolers) would ever give a haunted mirror, videotape, or music box the time of day. Characters have to show curiosity, or else there would be no movie. The Aztec kazoo that seals the fates of teenagers in Corin Hardy’s Whistle is pretty cool on an aesthetic level to ensure a believable interest, but you just have to go with it. The titular *checks notes* “death whistle” is merely a MacGuffin that forces these dummies to face premature immortality (the reason we’re here). Finding a Breakfast Club-type group being pursued by Miss Death, this inherently silly premise may seem lifted wholesale from the Final Destination franchise, but at its best, Whistle is a merciless and refreshingly R-rated relic.
In recovery and still grieving the death of her father, sullen teen Chrysanthemum (Dafne Keen) leaves Chicago and moves to a steel town. There, she’s the new girl in school and stays with her comic-obsessed cousin, Rel (Sky Yang). Not long after being assigned the former locker of a deceased basketball star (who gets immolated in the showers after a big game in the business-meaning opening scene), Chrys finds a death whistle inside of a mysterious-looking urn. Detention then throws her together with a group of friends, including diabetic doctor-in-training Ellie (Sophie Nélisse), smart popular girl Grace (Ali Skovbye), and Grace’s alcoholic jock boyfriend Dean (Jhaleil Swaby). The skull-shaped whistle is then blown, of course, and everyone’s clock starts ticking. They haven’t summoned a demon or a supernatural entity, just their own deaths. Dun-dun-dun!
At worst, Whistle reminds here and there of other, blander horror movies, like Wish Upon, The Friendship Game, and Tarot, but also far better ones, like Talk to Me. The plot follows a pretty standard investigative pattern, and a few too many plot conveniences could have been tweaked to get where the characters need to go (yes, of course, a high school student who works the nurse’s station at a hospital has access to medical records). For instance, the whistle gets explained away by “Grandma Exposition,” the dying grandmother (Michelle Fairley) to the whistle’s previous “owner” (of course, she owns a bunch of antiquities). Everywhere else, Whistle does deliver as a back-to-basics one-by-one slasher. Director Hardy (The Nun) and writer Owen Egerton make enough of an effort to play with teenage archetypes, and they get to have fun killing some of them off.
The young cast is solid across the board, imbuing semi-stock characters with just enough life and likability to not feel solely like attractive pawns. Dafne Keen, who impressively remained silent for most of Logan opposite Hugh Jackman in her debut role, still holds a tough exterior as Chrys, who understandably looks like the Judd Nelson of this group considering what she’s been through. Keen may have a few flat line readings that sneak through, but her work is layered and sweet when getting to act opposite a lovely, sincere Sophie Nélisse (Yellowjackets), Chrys’ mutual crush. Not everyone in the cast gets the amount of characterization that they receive, but Sky Yang and Ali Skovbye are two other standouts.
It would be low-hanging fruit to say that a horror movie titled Whistle blows it, and fortunately, that isn’t the case. A set-piece where a character gets chased by a crone in a harvest festival maze is tense and atmospherically designed. Most of the death scenes go harder than they even need to, although it is a bit strange that one involves aging purely because a teen likes to do their homework in their home hot tub (pruning is the worst). Others involving drinking and driving, as well as a medical condition, prey on actual fears. There’s one spectacularly gnarly kill in particular that occurs in a bedroom; the practical effects work is inventive (with a few CG enhancements), and for setting alone, it rivals Johnny Depp’s bloody bed scene in A Nightmare on Elm Street. Doomphonic’s effective musical score is like a pounding death rattle, overwhelming in the dread it conjures and accenting the gruesome kills when necessary.
Not too shy about his genre influences, director Hardy even throws in enough visually affectionate nods, from Nick Frost’s history teacher being named Mr. Craven to “Cronenberg” being a cigarette brand. This might be a deep cut, but even the placement of Divinyls’ “Back to the Wall” during the introduction of our protagonist could be considered a nod to Renny Harlin’s wildly underrated Freddy Krueger sequel A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master. The climax somehow manages to borrow from not only Flatliners but also Drag Me to Hell and It Follows, with a drug-dealing, switchblade-carrying youth pastor (Percy Hynes White) figuring into it all.
Rough around the edges though it most certainly is, Whistle still leavens its deathly serious nastiness with a macabre sense of fun and more than a few characters to care about. Hopefully, if anything, this will double as a call to action, once and for all stopping teenagers from blowing those pesky Aztec death whistles.
Rating: 3/5
Whistle hits theaters on February 6, 2026.
