The horror genre is so vast and is evidently limitless. There are countless possibilities that filmmakers can come up with to scare audiences or tell a story that’s clever in how it conveys its messaging and uses horror to depict that. When thinking of horror films that do a good job of both scaring and getting the mind thinking, I can think of several, such as It Follows or Midsommar, which also have a lot of cultural significance as a movie. Whistle has the premise locked down, but has the worst execution I’ve seen for a horror movie yet in 202,6 and it’s disappointing to see Dafne Keen in yet another movie where her full capabilities aren’t displayed.
Whistle follows Chrys (Keen), who moves into a new town and lives with her cousin, Rel Taylor (Sky Yang). On the first day of her new school, she comes across an ancient, cursed artefact that, when used, summons their future deaths to hunt them down. Admittedly, I went into this movie with some expectations of not only being able to get a good time from this watch, which is a bare minimum expectation with any film, but also the hope that I’d get educated on the Aztec Death Whistle. This artefact is the tool of many horror stories for content creators on social media and makes for a scary doomscroll at 3 AM, but Whistle ultimately fails to both scare and educate its audience.
Like with most horror films that you can find, our main character, Chrys, has a dark background that she struggles to deal with mentally and is a weapon used against her when it comes to being bullied and also when it comes to eventually escaping her future death. She’s the only character in the movie that feels three-dimensional, and that’s me being fair. In a movie where the entire cast is set to die, it’s best for them to either be made interesting or have a few of them be likeable. That isn’t the case with Whistle, where you’re stuck with dealing with flat, dull and two-dimensional characters who are also accompanied by the most lacklustre performances you’ll see this year.
The overall feeling you get from Whistle is that it feels like a student’s final project in university. There wasn’t enough time to create a relatively original film so you copy and paste Final Destination but somehow make that concept worse, you make it your goal to make all the “gruesome” kills the main event of the movie but decide to opt for CGI which completely takes the audience away from the reality of the movie, and finally, you decide not to research anything regarding the culturally significant item that’s integral to the story which stops you from making anything worthwhile.
Whistle has a lot of aspects that are just underutilised, with one of them being its characters. The only important characters in the movie are Chrys, her cousin and her love interest, Ellie Gains (Sophie Nélisse), and even saying this feels like a stretch when it comes to Rel. He has a crush on Grace Friedkin (Alissa Skovbye), who’s dating one of Pellington High’s jocks, Dean (Jhaleil Swaby). The filmmakers make it seem like Rel might have somewhat of a chance, but this storyline doesn’t ever move direction and is randomly used as a catalyst for Rel’s anger and a way to dive into the film’s third-act dilemma.
We do get some cute scenes between Chrys and Ellie, but even though Dafne and Sophie both deliver the only decent performances in the entire film, their characters fall into that trap of feeling underdeveloped. Whistle so badly wants to terrify its audience with its kills, but even when it comes to that aspect of the movie, it doesn’t perform well. There’s one kill that comes to mind that genuinely blew my mind away, and if more of the kills were on that level, this could’ve been an entertaining film,m to say the least. It’s alright if you want to make a movie that’s a complete blood bath and has a lack of character development and story, look at Terrifier, it does exactly that and succee, ds but to lack in all departments is what sets you up for immediate failure, which is why Whistle might remain one of the worst horror movies to release in 2026.
★★
In cinemas now / Dafne Keen, Sophie Nélisse, Sky Yang, Nick Frost, Jhaleil Swaby, Alissa Skovbye, Percy Hynes White / Dir: Corin Hardy / Black Bear / 15
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