No matter the decade, it seems that high school kids just can’t stop themselves getting embroiled in supernatural shenanigans that shorten their lifespan exponentially. But while some filmmakers strive to find new ways to deliver fear and loathing to a teenage wasteland, Corin Hardy seems cheerfully content to simply riff on movies of the past with his latest opus, Whistle. Maybe it’s unfair to pick on the newest film from the dude that gave us both The Hallow and The Nun considering he spent a considerable time in development hell thanks to originally being linked to that ill-fated reboot of The Crow and we should be content that the director just wants to offer up some horror-based comfort food. However, with films such as Talk To Me finding new ways to explore very familiar territory, is Hardy selling both himself and us short with a frightener that ditches metaphor and allegory in favour of loud noises and gnarly deaths?
It’s a new day in a new school for wide-eyed, reformed addict Chrysanthemum Willis (no, really), but while her harrowing past has already marked her as an outsider to many of her classmates, she still manages to hang out with a group of other, mismatched kids. But while she uneasily spends time with her geeky cousin Rel; basketball alpha male Dean; rich girl Grace and pre-med hopeful Ellie, the recent bizarre death of a local basketball star still has everyone on edge.
In fact, when “Chrys” is given the dead jock’s old locker, she discovers a grotesque looking, skull-shaped whistle inside which soon sets off a chain reaction of incredibly weird shit. As the group hangs out at Grace’s pool after they all got detention, some bright spark thinks its a good idea to put that fucked up thing to their lips and blow for all they’re worth and from there things progressively go north.
The instrument is an Olmec death whistle and once someone blows it, it has the very unfortunate effect of summoning death. But it doesn’t just summon any old death, oh no, it summons your death to confront you early so you die how you’re fated to die 20, 30 or even 50 years from now. If you’re slated to die from old age, a hellish version of you from that future appears as a screeching, dessicated wraith that will inflict the same end upon you no matter how young and healthy you are.
While that may suck if you have a relatively peaceful death, imagine how bad it’ll be if you are destined to have a real nasty one and it seems that some of these five, unlucky kids have some really brutal endings coming to them in a matter of days. As the survivors alternate between denial, grief and trying to figure this shit out, they go through the usual hallucinations and jump scares as their premature death creeps ever closer – but seeing as Chrys has already tasted it before back in her addict days, she has no intention of going through it again.
I mentioned earlier that with Whistle, it seems that Corin Hardy is attempting to blow off steam from his failed Crow journey by essentially recreating a shit ton of formative movies from his youth. As a result, Whistle turns out to be a hopeful amalgamation of A Nightmare On Elm Street and Final Destination – however it ultimately feels more like a merging of A Nightmare On Elm Street Part 4 and Final Destination 3, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, it just means that it’s not as smart or refined as it could have been. Worse yet, as this is yet another bout of “curse” horror that’s following in the creepy footsteps of numerous Ring movies, two Smiles, It Follows and Drag Me To Hell (to name only a few), Whistle and it becomes fairly apparent that Hardy has no intention of breaking any molds in order to get his fright on.
In fact, there’s such a lack of original ideas on offer here, more jaded horror fans may find Whistle a bit of a chore to wade through as a strong been there, done that tone prevails throughout the whole affair. One character even has their nose slit with a switchblade much like Jack Nicholson does in Chinatown, so Hardy’s liberal borrowing doesn’t even remain restricted to the horror genre, but there is a few, noticable upsides. The first is that Hardy may not be ploughing any new ground, but he’s having fun with what he does have which is a perky run time, a cool gimmick with the whistle and some kick ass deaths which goes a long way from stopping Whistle completely washing out like such movies as Tarot. There’s a cool, throwback vibe due to Chrys’ record collection (don’t think I didn’t notice that little Nightmare 4 needle drop by Divinyls, Corin), there’s an oppressive feel to the look of the film thanks to it being set in a town with a steel mill based economy and there’s the odd, weird side stories such as a drug dealing youth pastor and Nick Frost’s chain smoking teacher (named Mr. Craven, naturally).
But while the cast, lead by the giant, doe eyes peeking out from the ghastly fringe of Logan’s Dafne Keen (arguably the worst fringe in horror since Courtney Cox in Scream 3), go through the motions of teen angst, rebellion against death itself and the early pangs of queer love, we all know that the majority of them a chiefly here to present us with some showstopping deaths and it’s here where Hardy truly gets to blow his own trumpet – or whistle. In a neat twist, the malformed creature that pursues you is the version of yourself at the moment of your death, so not only are the villains mauled dopplegangers ravaged by age, illness or some other, fucked up means, but the film stages them with a satisfying combination of both visual and real effects. In fact, there’s a couple of real standouts here too with one such victim succumbing to his own imolation and another (in the film’s best moment) excruciatingly watching all of his bones break and splinter as a lifetime of drunk driving comes calling.
But again, where other directors has strived to do something new with the scares, Hardy has no problems letting his sound department carry the load, resorting to some very loud jump scares in lieu of mounting dread. However, while my gripes come from a virtual lifetime of watching horror flicks, there’s a sense that to those brand new to the genre who aren’t as saturated with the influences that’s driving the director might actually have an unironic blast with this.
While Whistle may be too derivative for fussier horror connoisseurs weaned on Craven and Carpenter, there’s a certain amount of undemanding fun to be had that’s born from Hardy’s enthusiasm. Yes, I could name a dozen, similar films right off the top of my head that are comfortably superior, but a strong visual streak and some cracking death sequences means that Whistle doesn’t quite blow.
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