Watching a film about an Aztec death whistle is, I imagine, similar to the act of blowing an Aztec death whistle: what else did you expect? It is, admittedly, a schlocky, agreeably tasteless premise on which to build a slice of teen horror cheese – Whistle is a film about a whistle that kills. Adjust your expectations accordingly! But despite setting the bar way down low in the pits of hell, Whistle barely crosses it.
Teenage recovering addict Chrys (Logan’s Dafne Keen, finally in a lead role 9 years later) – born Chrysanthemum but she’s not like other girls, you see – moves to an overcast steel town in the wake of a personal tragedy. Whistle isn’t short on atmosphere (it’s a rare modern horror that feels intentionally dourly lit) but when it comes to impactful scares it comes up empty.
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Chrys arrives at her new school and immediately inherits a locker housing an ancient Aztec death whistle (If I had a penny…) Blow it, claims the obligatory exposition-spouting older woman (Michelle Fairley) at the beginning of act two, and your death is brought forward. Fated to die of old age? You’ll shrivel up on the spot. Supposed to pass away in a car crash? Your body is going to be violently filleted in your bedroom. It’s a curious twist on the Final Destination concept that’s given some life by Corin Hardy’s intense, energetic direction.
But Whistle is ultimately hamstrung by plasticky frights and limp characterisation. Keen starts off morose and stays morose as the grieving Chrys, and the film clearly thinks it’s doing something by emphasising a thinly sketched romance between Chrys and the sweetest girl in class, Ellie (Sophie Nélisse). The pair are supported by a cast of Breakfast Club knockoffs – the nerd (Sky Yang), the jock (Jhaleil Swaby), and the queen bee (Ali Skovbye) – who are neither charming enough to mourn nor bitchy enough to loathe.
Hardy peppers in Easter egg references to noted directors – David Cronenberg, Paul Verhoeven and, uh, Andy Muschietti – so he’s clear about his influences, but poorly-rendered charred ghouls and decrepit crones cannot come close to the evocative body horror of his inspirations. Nicholas Emerson’s crisp editing keeps Whistle ticking along at a fine pace but it’s all too po-faced. The grimy industrial town ripped from All the Right Moves and the inclusion of a youth pastor who’s secretly a drug pusher (?) are amusingly retro details (there’s a strong ‘don’t do drugs, kids!’ sentiment that feels mostly unironic), but Whistle never lands on anything memorable.
More than anything, Whistle evokes 2017’s Wish Upon, a similarly weak, CGI-riddled horror about a haunted music box that also drew heavily from 80s horror. Both films take B‑movie ideas and fail to give them the right dose of camp and gross practical effects to really pop. There was room to do something ridiculous here – it bears repeating: this is a film about a killer whistle. Why is it taking itself so seriously?