By MICHAEL GINGOLD
Starring Dafne Keen, Sophie Nélisse and Sky Yang
Directed by Corin Hardy
Written by Owen Egerton
Independent Film Company/Shudder
There’s a sense in which WHISTLE would be a horror film even if the occult object at its center never had a direct impact on its characters’ lives. (If you want to avoid SPOILERS about just how it works, skip to the next paragraph—and don’t watch the trailer below.) This totem causes the deaths that people will eventually experience to catch up to them right away, and thus almost all of WHISTLE’s teens find out the hard way that they’re destined to suffer pretty gnarly, excruciating demises. There’s a potentially more existential version of WHISTLE where the kids simply learn about their horrible endings in advance, and now must live the rest of their lives with that knowledge, wondering when those grotesque fates will befall them.
As it stands, WHISTLE is a well-executed example of the Cursed Object formula crossed with FINAL DESTINATION, bringing some style and a little bit of heart to go with its sometimes extreme gore. “Nothing good ever comes of violence,” reads a poster on the wall at Pellington High School, clearly ignored by whatever force is responsible for giving an ancient Aztec Death Whistle a recurring home in one of its lockers. After a cold open (or, more appropriately, a hot open) in which the basketball player who owned that locker meets his end, it is taken over by new arrival Chrys (short for Chrysanthemum) Willet. Played by Dafne Keen, grown up from LOGAN and essentially taking the Winona Ryder role, Chrys is a moody Goth type who says things like, re: her tattoos, “I guess you find something you love and let it scar you for life.”
Following the death of her father under questionable circumstances, Chrys has moved in with her more outgoing cousin Rel (Sky Yang), who provides necessary exposition. Rel is a comics fan, in particular of a character called Revenger that he sometimes cosplays, and who resembles The Crow more than a little. (It’s not hard to see this as director Corin Hardy’s in-reference to his long time spent attached to the CROW remake, especially considering the genre name-drops scattered throughout WHISTLE: “Verhoeven Steel,” “Muschietti Cigars,” etc.)
No sooner has Chrys been introduced to Pellington High’s a-hole jocks and a couple of not-so-mean girls than she has found the Death Whistle and brings it to a gathering at one of their houses. There it is ill-advisedly blown, thus summoning Enchaca, the Aztec phantom of death. The mythology and methodology of this spirit in Owen Egerton’s script are refreshingly uncomplicated for this kind of movie, though once Chrys and her friends realize they’re not long for this world, it isn’t so easy to figure out how to save their skins.
A number of the story beats here are familiar, including the visit to an elderly woman (Michelle Fairley) who knows the Cursed Object’s secrets. In this case, she’s a collector of rare artifacts from various cultures, who does her part to head off any sense of appropriation here by referring to the Death Whistle as “stolen treasure from a plundered people.” Amidst the tropes, there are some nice character moments, particularly between Chrys and fellow doomed classmate Ellie (Sophie Nélisse), who begin a tentative romance while trying to reverse the curse. Keen and Nélisse’s sensitive performances, especially when it comes to this subplot, help elevate WHISTLE above being just about the bloodbath.
Hardy and Egerton also drop in a few plot surprises, particularly a cool twist during a climactic confrontation, and humorous bits that work, some of them involving Nick Frost as history teacher Mr. Craven (see above). And, most significantly, Hardy stages the various dispatchings for maximum impact, employing seriously nasty makeup effects by Steve Newburn (THANKSGIVING, FRANKENSTEIN) and Paul Jones (WHAT WE DO IN THE SHADOWS)—with triple Oscar-winner Mark Coulier credited with “additional prosthetics.” These impressive splatter setpieces deliver what the audience is here for, and it’s to the filmmakers’ credit that WHISTLE offers a little more as well.
