WHAT’S IT ABOUT

When his 8-year-old son is abducted, a widowed crime writer looks to his estranged father, a retired police detective, for help. He soon discovers a connection to the decades-old case of a convicted serial killer known as the Whisper Man.

MOVIESinMO REVIEW

When Robert De Niro, Adam Scott, Michelle Monaghan, and Michael Keaton are cast to be in the same movie, you expect something special. Then Netflix releases The Whisper Man, and within twenty minutes you realize that a stacked cast means nothing if nobody bothers to write them a real story. It starts with Adam Scott playing Tom Kennedy, a widowed crime writer who brings his eight-year-old son, Jake, back to his New Jersey hometown. Not long after they settle in, Jake disappears. The suspected kidnapper copies the methods of a killer called The Whisper Man, a man who once whispered through children’s windows before pulling them into the dark. That original killer, Frank Carter, already sits behind bars, played by Michael Keaton in a role that clearly deserved a stronger movie built around it. Detective Amanda Beck, played by Monaghan, takes on the new case. Then the film drops its biggest twist. The retired detective who caught Frank Carter years earlier, Pete Willis, played by De Niro, turns out to be Tom’s estranged father. One town. One old crime. One new crime. Three people connected by blood and by case file. That is not a twist. That is a shortcut. So we are to believe that Tom rents a house that sat empty because of the original Whisper Man murders. Then, the new killer zeroes in on Jake specifically, for reasons the script barely bothers to explain. Near the climax, Beck tracks down the killer because a neighbor mentions unwatered houseplants. That detail cracks the case. Not fingerprints, not instinct, not real detective work, just dry plants. Alex North wrote a bestselling novel that this script claims to adapt, and somewhere between the book and the screen, writers Ben Jacoby and Chase Palmer lost everything that made the story worth telling. The Russo Brothers produced this film. Somebody with that much experience read this script and still said yes. North’s novel carried real dread. The Whispers Man had a presence like it reached in from the beyond. That version of the story could have been the strongest horror release of the year. Instead, this movie flattens all of it into a standard cop drama, the kind you might come across late at night on an old cable channel. The Guardian described the film as loaded with hoariness, and that word fits it well. Every piece feels recycled, and none of it lands with any real weight. You can trace exactly where this movie borrowed its ideas. Beck walking alone into danger mirrors The Silence of the Lambs. The way the killer selects his targets is something like The Black Phone. Jake noticing things nobody else can see is so much like The Sixth Sense, this director needed to be served. Those films earned their power. The Whisper Man copies their setups without ever understanding what made those stories work in the first place. Director James Ashcroft built real tension in his earlier film, Coming Home in the Dark, but here he swaps that skill for what The Guardian labeled the dreaded Netflix look: flat lighting, gray color, almost no visual tension anywhere on screen. The editing does not help matters. Scenes get chopped into short pieces that never connect the way they should. Long stretches drag with nothing happening, then the movie rushes through moments that needed more room to breathe. Even with all that screen time, the characters still feel like strangers by the final act. Roger Ebert’s site named the real problem plainly: nobody buys that Scott and De Niro are father and son. Their scenes together stay thin and surface level, without one moment that suggests any real history between them. De Niro gives what he can, because that is simply what he always does, but the script leaves him almost nothing to build from. This is where the movie fails hardest. Four talented actors show up, and the story never gives a single one of them a role with real depth. Adam Scott plays a quieter, sadder version of his Severance character, and that performance works on Severance because a whole world supports it there. Here, he is just a skilled actor stuck waiting on a script that never shows up. Monaghan receives even less to work with. Her detective exists only to push the plot forward, not to feel like an actual person making real choices. The suspects the film tosses at the audience, including Hamish Linklater playing a serial killer memorabilia collector, read as so obviously fake that you could spot them from another room. The Whisper Man wanted to be a serious thriller. It wanted the tension of Silence of the Lambs and the emotional pull of a father racing to save his son. It wanted a mystery that kept you guessing until the end. Instead, IGN pointed out that the film telegraphs its biggest reveal early, so you spend the second half simply waiting for the movie to catch up to what you already figured out. The tone shifts scene to scene without ever settling on solid ground. The cast deserved a stronger script. Alex North’s novel deserved a real adaptation instead of a summary. Netflix, already carrying a mixed reputation this year, needed a stronger release than this one. Close the tab. Go find something else to watch.

OUR RATING – A VERY SLOW 3