Shadows on the Wall

Whistle

dir Corin Hardy
scr Owen Egerton
prd Whitney Brown, David Gross, Macdara Kelleher
with Dafne Keen, Sophie Nelisse, Sky Yang, Jhaleil Swaby, Ali Skovbye, Percy Hynes White, Nick Frost, Michelle Fairley, Mika Amonsen, Stephen Kalyn, Conrad Coates, Lanette Ware
release US 6.Feb.26,
UK 13.Feb.26
25/Canada 1h40

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Mixing comedy with nasty horror, this movie has echoes of Sam Raimi films like Drag Me to Hell, as likably naive people encounter deadly supernatural menace. Director Corin Hardy and writer Owen Egerton have fun with the scary stuff, especially as they play up the grisliness. But they don't put much effort into establishing the characters, leaving them rather sketchy. Fortunately, the up-for-it actors grab our interest.

In upstate New York, Chrys (Keen) moves in with her cousin Rel (Yang) and attends the local high school. She's more intrigued by reticent Ellie (Nelisse) than popular girl Grace (Skovbye) or hot jock Dean (Swaby). Then Chrys finds a relic in her locker that Mr Craven (Frost) identifies as an Aztec death whistle. And anyone who hears it's haunting sound is now in mortal danger. As the body count rises, Chrys and Ellie consult with a mysterious woman (Fairley) who knows things. And the peril comes to a head at the town's Harvest Festival.

Despite the standard structure, witty wrinkles include the lurking presence of sinister pastor/dealer Noah (White). And even though it's shaped like a menacing skull, no one takes the whistle seriously until the unimaginably gruesome deaths kick in. A moral conundrum arises with the idea that you can stop death by putting someone else in harm's way. But the screenplay never grapples with this, or anything else that might have given the film a point. Instead, it remains a simple gross-out good time.

What makes it engaging is the ensemble cast, ably led by the superbly understated Keen as an outsider who has good reason to be so moody. Even her tiniest reactions to a possibly hopeful connection with Nelisse's more opaque Ellie are played to perfection, giving the audience something to grab hold of in between the gleefully murderous set-pieces. And there are plenty of these to keep genre fans happy, including a couple of gasp-worthy moments.

Oddly, the script sidesteps any meaningful discussion of mortality, even as there are some tantalising morsels of dialog relating to the fact that everyone will have to face their end at some point. Instead, the only motivating factor for these young people is that they're young. And in a movie like this, that isn't enough to get the audience on-side, largely because it's designed to entertain us with each display of excessive gore. So why would we root for anyone to survive?

themes, language, violence 10.Feb.26

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