A group of teenagers find a very useful Aztec whistle that kills you when you blow it in 2026's Whistle. What will those Aztecs think of next. I guess this movie isn't the worst I've ever seen but there's something really lazy about it.
If you've been following my blog this year, you've probably noticed I've been watching a lot of new movies lately. With all the bleak, grim stories in the news about current times and the not too distant future, it's been a comfort to find that there's some really vital filmmaking going on. There are movies like Hokum or Undertone that are amazing and movies that, even if they're not absolutely stunning, are at least trying bold new ideas and going out on a creative limb, movies like Touch Me or Pretty Lethal. So it's a real drag to see something like Whistle that feels so stale and half-assed.
The cast is fine. Among the group of teens, the film focuses on Daphne Keen as Chrys, a shy girl who's just moved to town and is staying with her cousin, Rel (Sky Yang). Rounding out the group of friends who find the whistle are Ellie (Sophie Nelisse), Chrys' love interest, a jock named Dean (Jhaleil Swaby), and his girlfriend, Grace (Ali Skovbye), a prom queen type. Nick Frost has a small role as their teacher.
Aztec death whistles actually exist but no-one knows what they were actually used for. This movie decides that, when you blow one, everyone in earshot is stalked by an apparition of themselves on the moment of their inevitable death. When this apparition grabs you, you die immediately, ahead of your fated time. So when Grace, for example, is killed, it's by an old lady version of herself.
Although Chrys and Ellie and their budding romance is centrally framed, the filmmakers are clearly more interested in Rel. He's obsessed with a comic book character called The Revenger, clearly based on The Crow. When it looks like he's fated just to be randomly killed off by a magic whistle, he struggles to fit this into his conception of a world that turns on justice and retribution. This eventually leads him to a moral quandary that feels like it ought to have been the film's centrepiece.
I don't think male, heterosexual filmmakers can't make stories about lesbians. Mulholland Drive will always be a shining example to the contrary but I think straight guys often get a little too dazzled by the fundamental appeal of pretty young lesbians to give the characters much complexity and that's certainly the case here.
The film has a villain who comes across as both lazy and interesting. He's a youth pastor named Noah (Percy Hynes White) who's a true zealot yet he's also an ornery drug pusher. I'm used to Hollywood movies dunking on Christians but this guy is such an extreme strawman it's kind of impressive.
Nick Frost's role would've also made for a more interesting protagonist. When he realises what the whistle is, he immediately takes it and tries to sell it in an online auction. A whole movie could've been made about his morally dubious character, caught in a supernatural trap.
Whistle is available on Shudder. By the way, if you watch this movie through Amazon Prime, which is where I have my Shudder subscription, make sure to disable the mechanism that forces the player to switch to another video once the credits start to role. This movie has a crucial plot twist after the first few credits, which I wasn't able to see until I disabled that thing.
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