OVERVIEW
A group of high school students finds an Aztec death whistle that, once blown, summons each listener’s death. They put it on display at a pool party, as any teenager would. In Final Destination fashion, death starts collecting them one by one through a string of elaborate “accidents”.
BACKGROUND
Directed by Corin Hardy, Whistle is the English filmmaker’s third feature, following the promise of The Hallow and the weak Conjuring spin-off The Nun. Shot in Ontario, Canada, on a small budget, Hardy has cited ’80s crowd-pleasers like A Nightmare on Elm Street, The Lost Boys, and Fright Night as inspirations.
EXECUTION
For all the director’s ’80s crowd-pleaser references, the closest cousin here is Final Destination, just a more uninspired take on the concept. It runs on the same “death is coming for you” engine, with familiar, predictable beats as soon as the characters realize they are on a timer.
As a fan of that franchise, I’ll admit it doesn’t take much for the structure to work. Give me genuinely creative deaths, be at least competent with the rest, and I’ll eat it up. Whistle is competent enough to function, but it can’t turn the concept into a good time. The deaths tease interesting ideas, then undercut them with quick pacing, thin staging, and a weird lack of urgency. Nothing feels inescapable, nothing escalates, and the deaths go by without that satisfying punch.
The film also clearly has a much lower budget than the usual Final Destination, and it shows. The visual effects and make-up often look ugly and pull you out of the experience. But that still doesn’t excuse the lack of style. There is no sense of fun. No mischievous score. No cool framing or imagery. It is, unfortunately, as bland as it gets.
The writing isn’t any better, with some of the most eye-rolling lines possible (“You did not find it. It found you.”), and characters who commit many unjustifiable actions. Three stand out above all: the central romance, with an attraction that comes out of nowhere; a moment where two characters scream and stop their friend from touching the priest; and the priest deciding to chase two of the kids for no clear reason. The movie also has the dumbest version of the police and the outside world, accepting truly weird deaths without basic questioning. Wouldn’t they investigate a character’s cancer history, for example? We don’t need smart characters in movies like this, but constantly feeling like you’re yelling “c’mon” at the screen isn’t a fun experience.
AFTERTASTE
Whistle is not the worst way to kill ninety minutes, and the concept does enough to keep it moving. But as a Final Destination cousin, it is a bland, cheap-looking version of the idea, and it rarely finds the mischievous fun that makes this kind of formula click.