“Whistle” is a Pitch-Perfect Teen Slasher
There is no greater horror movie villain than death itself. The Final Destination franchise is built on death having its way with those who try to cheat it. Even in slasher horror movies, death may come at the hands of a human, but it’s still the end for most of those characters. Death rears its ugly head for us all, character in a slasher movie or not. Of course, if you’re like the characters in Corin Hardy’s Whistle, you might make a few decisions that bring death to you sooner rather than later.
Chrys (Dafne Keen), like many a character in a teen horror flick, is new in town. She’s living with her cousin Rel (Sky Yang), but we don’t know immediately what caused these circumstances. Rel introduces Chrys to his group of longtime friends. There’s Grace (Ali Skovbye), who Rel has harbored a crush on since they were kids, Grace’s boyfriend, Dean (Jhaleil Swaby), and Ellie (Sophie Nélisse), who finds herself drawn to Chrys despite the newcomer’s standoffish personality. All these teenage emotions are thrown for a loop when they come across an Aztec death whistle that slowly starts picking them off one-by-one.
courtesy of IFC Films
Whistle isn’t made for horror aficionados who have spent decades loving the genre. It’s for the version of themselves when they were younger. When they were in their friend’s basement for a sleepover and someone pulled out a DVD of a movie that would begin their life-long love affair with horror films. Those hardened to the genre should look at Whistle through younger eyes to appreciate what it accomplishes. There are some gnarly, imaginative kill scenes that will be exciting whether it’s the viewer’s first or five-hundredth horror movie. Whistle doesn’t seek to reinvent this genre, but instead to pay profound homage to it. The cigarettes in the film are Cronenberg-branded, the cigars are Muschietti, and the kids take a turn down Verhoeven Street. Hardy approaches Owen Egerton’s script with a deep desire to instill passion for the genre into the next generation.
It certainly helps that Whistle’s two leads, Nélisse and Keen, are more than capable of adding nuance to their emotional arcs. Not just the queer love story that springs up between them, but their characters’ somewhat differing views on death. Nélisse’s Ellie wants to be a doctor, and as a diabetic, is aware of what her body needs to stay alive. Keen’s Chrys survived an overdose but lost someone close to her in a car accident on the way to the hospital. Chrys has all but accepted that her life is over, that there’s nothing left for her, but Ellie, and the ever-looming Aztec death whistle curse, show her that she has a choice. Even when she feels like she’s got nothing, Chrys has to come to the realization that living is a choice she wants to make.
courtesy of IFC Films
Keen’s scowl complements Nélisse’s sunny disposition, and it’s quite impressive Whistle is able to pull off a sweet high school romance in the midst of a death curse plot. The scene of Keen’s Chrys trying, failing, and trying a few more times is tooth-achingly sweet. She’s trying to craft the perfect message to tell Ellie she wants to get to know her, but she’s also so afraid of letting someone in. All this unfolds as Tiger Dreams’ “Dark and Lonely Night” plays in the background. It’s a newer song, but has the feel of a modernized doo-wop, lovesick, teeny bopper song from the ’60s. It’s a very different feel from the larger plot of death stalking a group of teens, but it’s also essential to help these characters be more rooted in reality.
“What if I don’t want to die?” asks one of the characters. “Then you shouldn’t have been born,” answers another. Death is simple. As Ivy Raymore (Michelle Fairley), the film’s resident scholar on memento mori artifacts, says, “Dying is not a choice. That’s inevitable. Living, that’s up to you.” Whistle, for all its splattered blood and guts, is surprisingly determined to celebrate life. Hopefully, viewers don’t also have to discover an Aztec death whistle to come to that conclusion.
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