Whistle review – a smart, sympathetic spin on the cursed-artefact horror
This chilling film about a skull-shaped Aztec whistle combines Final Destination-style deaths with a tender portrayal of anxious adolescence.
On the surface, this teen-focused, genre-aware Irish-Canadian horror film appears to be the kind of project greenlit after the success of similar films at the box office. However, instead of suburban Australia, writer Owen Egerton and director Corin Hardy set the story in an autumnal, Springsteen-ready North American steeltown. Here, artsy high-schooler Chrys (Dafne Keen) inherits the locker of the star basketball player who we have just seen perish in a fiery prologue. The deadly object she discovers is a skull-shaped Aztec whistle inscribed with either “summon the dead” or “summon your dead” (there is some linguistic debate on this). Naturally, she returns it, and everyone lives happily ever after.
I jest, of course. Initially, the horror element is less overt than in the intense Antipodean predecessor, but soon the whistle’s use makes everyone’s worst fears about dying literal. This development allows Hardy’s increasingly graphic kill scenes to carry a Final Destination-like poignancy: one cannot help but feel sympathy for the boy racer who dies in a car crash inside his upstairs bedroom. One similarity to the Philippou brothers’ film is the empathy shown towards insecure, troubled teens who are far from the typical disposable jocks and prom queens. Egerton observes courtship rituals with care, quietly highlighting Chrys’s efforts to come out to her upright classmate Ellie (Sophie Nélisse); beneath the looming threat of death, this is a story about living one’s truest life.
British director Hardy appears to enjoy himself more here than he did with his previous work. He embraces a solid in-joke – naming objects, places, and Nick Frost’s doomed teacher Mr Craven after notable horror directors – and pushes a sequence involving a labyrinthine straw maze, likely beyond the actual resources of a small-town harvest festival, towards a pleasingly surreal atmosphere. Although the film struggles to successfully integrate a loose-end preacher-slash-drug dealer character (Percy Hynes White), elsewhere it achieves the delicate balance of feeling familiar without seeming derivative, featuring scenes reminiscent of films audiences enjoy, occasionally with a novel twist. This makes it suitable for Friday or Saturday night viewing.
“summon the dead” or “summon your dead” (there’s some linguistic quibbling)
“your heart can only go out to the boy racer who perishes via car crash in his upstairs bedroom”
“Egerton observes courtship rituals with tenderness, quietly foregrounding Chrys’s struggles to come out to upright classmate Ellie (Sophie Nélisse); beneath the looming shadow of death, this is an attempt to live one’s truest life.”
“He runs with a solid in-joke – naming objects, places and Nick Frost’s doomed teacher Mr Craven after noted horror directors – and pushes a sequence involving a labyrinthine straw maze, surely beyond the actual resources of a small town harvest festival, towards the pleasingly surreal.”
