One of these days, horror movies are going to run out of cursed objects to trigger deaths after a certain number of days. But until that time comes, welcome to Whistle’s object of choice: an ancient Aztec Death Whistle. Anyone within earshot of its piercing sound will summon their future death to hunt them down. So if you’re supposed to die in a fire at age 88, your future 88-year-old, burned-up self will track you down and smoke your ass…literally.
Dafne Keen (Logan, Deadpool and Wolverine) plays Chrys who arrives to the small town where he cousin Rel (Sky Yang) lives, and she basically decides to keep her head down and just finish high school. But along the way she meets a group of people, including Ellie (Sophie Nélisse, Yellow Jackets, Heated Rivalry), resident hot girl Grace (Ali Skovbye), and her boyfriend Dean (Jhaleil Swaby), all of whom hear the whistle when it turns up on Chrys’ locker and everyone dares Grace to blow it. And sure enough, the bodies start to pile up, beginning with their teacher Mr. Craven (Nick Frost), who confiscates the whistle shortly after Chrys finds it and thinks it might be worth money on an auction site. But once Grace does her thing, the kids start having flashes of their future deaths coming to get them, and it only gets worse.
Also on hand is a creepy young preacher (Noah Haggerty, Wednesday, My Old Ass), who turns out to be the local drug dealer as well, and not just your average, everyday pot dealer. He deals the hard stuff, and when he finds out that Chrys used to have a drug problem, he tempts her with both Jesus and heroin. Rounding out the cast is Michelle Fairly (Game of Thrones), playing a mother dying of cancer whose basketball star son dies in the film’s opening sequence. She has a history with ancient objects, and admits she was careless with her Death Whistle collection around the house. How many times have we heard that old excuse?
Whistle is directed by Corin Hardy (The Nun, The Hallow), working from a screenplay by Owen Egerton (one of the writing and performing talents behind the Alamo Drafthouse’s Master Pancake Theater), and it certainly has it moments of creative kills and possibly even finding a way to avoid getting killed. Plus, it has an ending that is both very clever but also remarkably similar to the ending of Smile 2. In fact, a great deal of Whistle seems derived from other death-curse movies of late; that’s not necessarily a bad thing but it does make the film feel a little too familiar. The cast is strong, with Keen leading the charge with a brooding charm that she seems to specialize in. The movie is certainly a relatively painless way to kill some time until the next Shudder spectacle pops up in theaters.
The film is now playing in theaters.
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