Whistle – Review

Cert – 15, Run-time – 1 hour 40 minutes, Director – Corin Hardy

After using an Aztec death whistle a group of high schoolers find their deaths hunting them down early.

With its tongue firmly out of its cheek Whistle is a call back to 90s group horrors where we’d see the central group of students picked off one-by-one by whatever form death took in that particular film. Final Destination may be the franchise that most comes to mind in the case of director Corin Hardy’s latest, written by Owen Egerton, as the future deaths of a group of high school students start to chase them down early after an Aztec death whistle is blown near them.

Chrys (Dafne Keen) is new to town and gets off to a rocky start when settling in at school, when the former star basketball player’s locker is given to her after he burns alive in the shower. After finding the death whistle in her locker its origins are investigated during a group detention, before a pool party/ essay writing session leads to it being used. Soon the group of five students are on the run from a series of enjoyably bloody, if slightly distractingly CG, splatter.

The kills are certainly entertaining and once into the swing of them there’s an enjoyment to be found from how Hardy builds up to them, instead of drawing them out. It again shows the 90s influences on Whistle while not feeling wholly dated or of the time as deaths lead to the mystery of how to stop them from catching up with the ensemble characters. Yet, when it comes to this resolution there’s the feeling that the film has been so focused on its build-up and keeping that going that by the time the third act comes around it suddenly runs out of steam. There’s still an entertainment factor, but one that’s not as strong or certain as there’s less room for the more upfront, casual deaths due to the narrative having a firmer grip on the reins.

Hardy manages to help see things through, with help from likable performances from Keen and those around Chrys, with particular focus on Ali Skovebye’s Grace as the girl she quickly gains a crush on. However, amongst the slightly faster pace of the third act’s events the feeling of steam having been lost is still felt as the film tries to wrap things up without being too brief about them. Generally, this manages to work with things clocking in at 1 hour and 40 minutes which largely go by fairly quickly.

Whistle appears to be largely made as a slice of horror simply to be enjoyed for its tension and gnarly kills. And with those it manages to pass the time fairly well. The tension may not be anything particularly grand, but there’s an entertaining suspense as we sit and wait to see the next death unfold, and just how that will happen. With that as a base the film works fine enough, even if it does sometimes show signs of being just a bit thin when it runs out of steam or seems to be finding a way to get the next character towards their usually amusing death.

While it can seem thin and as if it runs out of steam there’s enough within the 90s horror callback of Whistle to create enough amusement in the increasingly bloody deaths to see it through its run-time.