Corin Hardy’s Whistle is a teen occult slasher which deftly channels the most prevalent genre themes, avoids a cliché or two, and isn’t afraid to have its nerdy outsiders be marginalized kids who often have a nightmarish time in high school. The plot has holes and blaming everything on some long-murdered indigenous people is tired and racist, but if these problems are deal-breakers you’re probably not watching anyway.
The protagonist/new kid in school/final girl is Chrys (Dafne Keen), a recovering addict with a bleak past who’s moved to a small town to stay with her cousin Rel (Sky Yang.) In her locker she discovers an Aztec death whistle (as you do) which summons the deaths of all who hear it—which means that the death that waits for you in the future hears the whistle and crawls out of the dark to find you early. Rel’s hopeless crush object Grace (Ali Skovbye) blows the whistle where the whole gang can hear, and… extrapolate from there.
The metaphor here isn’t subtle, but that’s part of the fun. The kids are growing up, which means they’re facing the bleak life choices, and bleaker death choices, of adulthood. Ugly fates come in a range of forms—chronic health problems that metastasize over time; industrial accidents; the crunch of bone and spurt of blood that waits at the final stopping point of drinking and driving; old age; and, inevitably, overdose. Bad choices, bad luck, or just the clock running out—moving out of one life stage to another means moving towards the end of all stages, and the humiliations of high school are the preparation for the more thoroughgoing, or at least more final, humiliations of adulthood.
The cruelties of the high school social hierarchy are a long-time fascination of pop culture. But we’ve only recently gotten to the point where films not specifically about LGBT issues are willing to acknowledge the ways in which bullying and ostracization are often directed at queer people in particular. Pale goth outsider Chrys falls swiftly and sweetly for good girl doctor-in-training Ellie (Marie-Sophie Nélisse)—and in addition to ancient Aztec curses, the two have to fend off abusive bully, youth pastor, and youth drug pusher Noah (Percy Hynes White).
The fact that the godlier-than-thou Christian is persecuting queer youth isn’t dwelt upon at length, but it’s not an accident either. On the contrary it’s a pleasingly forthright statement of political values at a time when LGBT people on screen, and LGBT people in real life, are facing an ugly campaign of censorship and erasure. (It would be great if the film also addressed the way that non-white people can be targets, in high school and out, but those dynamics are unacknowledged.)
Beyond that, the brief turn by the always welcome Nick Frost as a pompous and avaricious teacher is the only performance that really stands out. But the rest of the actors are professional—not always a guarantee in these exercises. For the special effects, Hardy cribs some ideas from Malignant and Dracula for some scenes where the borrowing doesn’t necessarily make a lot of sense. Other murder scenes, though, make inventive use of CGI and practical effects together to stage tableaux of repulsive carnage. There are lots of jump scares for fans of jump scares, and even though the ending isn’t a surprise, the climax builds suspense with impressive skill.
Whistle doesn’t have the deft touch, psychological depth, or vision of top-tier works in its subgenre like The Blair Witch Project or the more recent Touch Me. But it’s made with some thought, glee, and, surprisingly, some heart. The older you get, the more you realize that you can’t expect much more than that from life, death, movies, or Aztec death whistles.