Whistle (2025)
If you've seen one supernatural slasher, you've essentially seen them all, and Whistle is unlikely to change your mind on that front. Corin Hardy's 2025 picture feels like someone took the Rube Goldberg mortality mechanics of Final Destination, mashed them up with the urban legend aesthetics of Candyman, and then sanded down all the sharp, terrifying edges until what remained was something aggressively, stubbornly ordinary.
The premise, at least on paper, sounds like a decent night out. A group of teenagers blow a cursed death whistle, summon a pack of ghouls, and are then hunted down and brutally dispatched one by one. There's a kernel of real fun in that concept, the kind of pulpy, silly horror that fully commits to its own daft logic and ends up being an absolute blast. The trouble is, the execution is so relentlessly by-the-numbers that you can practically read the screenplay's underlying code as the film plays out. Beat for beat, it goes exactly where you expect it to go.
When a film leans this heavily on a rigid formula, it desperately needs a cast that can inject some genuine human spark into the proceedings. The results here are mixed, to put it charitably. Most of the supporting teenagers feel like they're simply waiting for their turn to be eaten, delivering their lines with all the emotional weight of a microwave beep. They're not characters so much as they are scheduled victims, and it's hard to care about people the film itself doesn't seem particularly interested in.
The exceptions are worth noting, though. Dafne Keen, who proved she could carry a film on her shoulders in Logan (2017), anchors things here with a decent, grounded performance that makes you actually give a damn when the monsters come knocking. She does the heavy lifting that the script refuses to do for her. And then there's Nick Frost, reliably charming as ever, bringing warmth and a welcome hint of wit to every scene he's in. The man could make a dental appointment feel watchable. My only complaint is that the film doesn't give him nearly enough to do. A sharper script would have leaned into him much harder.
Where Whistle genuinely earns its keep is in the kills themselves. Hardy clearly knows how to stage a gory demise, and the varied, imaginative ways the ghouls go about their business are entertaining enough to keep you from reaching for your phone. There's some solid practical work here, and a few sequences with a real nastiness to them. Credit where it's due.
But the sheer predictability of the central mechanic completely undermines any tension the film tries to build. Once you've clocked the exact rules of the whistle and what it sets in motion, the suspense evaporates. You stop watching a hunt and start watching a conveyor belt of special effects, waiting for the next teenager to make the fatal, obvious mistake you've already predicted. Compare that to something like Evil Dead Rise (2023), which took a well-worn horror framework and wrung genuine dread out of it by committing absolutely to its characters and its chaos. Whistle never quite gets there.
What you're left with is a highly functional, deeply unremarkable piece of genre horror. It does exactly what it needs to do to pass the time. There are a few decent scares, some solid gore, and two performances that rise above the material. But it lacks the narrative ingenuity or emotional weight to be anything more than okay. Hardy has made something perfectly serviceable, the kind of film that'll satisfy the most undemanding horror fans on a Friday night and be completely forgotten by Saturday morning. For anyone after a genuine fright, it's a profoundly middling experience.
Two and a half stars.
Rating: ★★½ | Year: 2025 | Watched: 2026-07-19
Where to watch
Watch in the UK
Stream: Amazon Prime Video · Amazon Prime Video with Ads
Rent: Apple TV Store · Rakuten TV · Amazon Video · Sky Store
Buy: Apple TV Store · Rakuten TV · Amazon Video · Sky Store
Physical: Amazon UK · Zavvi
Watch in the US
Stream: Philo · AMC Plus Apple TV channel · AMC+ Amazon Channel · AMC+ Roku Premium Channel
Rent: Amazon Video · Apple TV Store · Google Play Movies · YouTube
Buy: Amazon Video · Apple TV Store · Google Play Movies · YouTube
Physical: Amazon US
Affiliate disclosure: Movies With Macca may earn a small commission on purchases or subscriptions started via these links. It costs you nothing extra.
