Whistle has some interesting concepts but it gets tripped up by trying to be too many things in a single film.
Right at the beginning I have to say this about Whistle: the film doesn’t hesitate to swing for the fences every chance it gets. I can admire a film that throws caution to the wind and just goes for it, but in the case of this particular film…it doesn’t quite work all the way through.
Whistle
Directed by: Corin Hardy
Starring: Dafne Keen, Sophie Nélisse, Sky Yang
Jhaleil Swaby, Ali SkovbyeRelease Date: February 6, 2026
Whistle presents itself as a horror film with a somewhat familiar premise: a group of misfit teens find themselves in possession of a cursed artifact that will cause their painful deaths. The bulk of the film is then spent figuring out how to stop this from happening. It’s a tried and true horror film trope and not a bad way to start a story.
In the case of Whistle, the cursed artifact in question is a genuinely unsettling Aztec Death Whistle. Anyone who blows this whistle, or hears it being blown, dies a terrible death not long afterward. This puts an interesting twist on the “cursed item” narrative as one does not need to actually use the Death Whistle to be cursed by it. It’s up to Chrys (Dafne Keen) and her newly formed friend group to figure out why the whistle does what it does and how can they stop it before they all die.
While the general premise of the film is sound, I was almost immediately distracted by how crowded the plot quickly became. This film combines story elements from, at minimum: supernatural horror, teen misfit at a new school, teenage rom-com, and several elements that feel eerily close to slasher horror.
That is a lot to squeeze into one film, and the problem is it’s fairly obvious where each plot element joins together. Instead of feeling like a single cohesive story, Whistle swings from “I’m a scary horror movie” to “Let’s have a break with some cheesy teenage romance” complete with a classic rock montage playing in the background, sometimes in the span of a few minutes. Individually, each scene is fairly put together and well-acted. But joined into the greater whole….let’s just say your mileage will vary as to how much you enjoy the final product.
Dafne Keen gives a good performance as Chrys, but whenever she’s opposite Sophie Nélisse (who plays Ellie), her performance becomes fantastic. Those two have great chemistry together and are easily one of my favorite things about the film. The rest of the main cast didn’t quite click as well, but it’s not entirely clear if they were meant to or not.
One of my favorite plot elements is why each death scene plays out the way it does. Each death is different and horrifically gruesome, and it turns out that’s by design. Instead of making gory scenes “just because,” Whistle actually takes the time to spell out why and how these things are happening. The internal story logic clicks just enough that it’s possible to get invested in the story despite the flaws. What initially seems random actually makes a twisted amount of sense.
In the end, while Whistle features a fairly interesting, if familiar, premise, the overall film suffers from trying to be too many things at once. The tonal shifts do the film no favors, and while it’s not hard to find something to enjoy in the story, it’s just not as good as it could have been.
