Slender Man. Wolf Man. The Empty Man. The Invisible Man. Candyman. The annals of cinema history are strewn with malevolent males whose movies are na
Slender Man. Wolf Man. The Empty Man. The Invisible Man. Candyman. The annals of cinema history are strewn with malevolent males whose movies are named in their menacing honour. And to that ever-growing list will soon be added The Whisper Man, the child killer at the centre of Alex North’s bestselling book — and a starry novel Netflix thriller from filmmaker James Ashcroft. The movie stars Adam Scott as Tom Kennedy, a crime writer forced to ask for his estranged ex-detective father’s (Robert De Niro) lend a hand when his eight-year-old son is abducted, seemingly at the long-since locked-up Whisper Man’s hands. If it all sounds enticingly creepy, then check out the trailer below — it looks it too;
Adam Scott back playing a distressed writer for the second time this year (see also; Hokum)? Check. Robert De Niro locking into a quieter, more sombre register as a detective with ghosts in his past, rifts in his present, and one last case in front of him that could be his key to peace? Check. Seriously creepy, Black Phone-meets-Prisoners child abduction thriller vibes with a chilling predator who whispers at children’s windows before taking them? Triple check. Suffice it to say that The Whisper Man looks like a meaty, weighty psychological thriller with a lot of potential and a, well, killer central question: how can this historic Whisper Man — aka Frank Carter — be preying on kids again when he was put away decades ago? We don’t know, but by heck we want to find out…
The official synopsis for The Whisper Man — which also stars Michelle Monaghan, Hamish Linklater, Owen Teague, Acston Luca Porto, and Will Brill — reads: “When his eight-year-old son is abducted, a widowed crime writer looks to his estranged father, a retired former police detective, for help, only to discover a connection with the decades-old case of a convicted serial killer known as “The Whisper Man.”
With a killer cast, a killer premise, and even a killer nerve-jangling nursery rhyme to buoy its lore (“If you leave a door half open, soon you’ll hear the whispers spoken. If your window’s left unlatched, you’ll hear him tapping at the glass. If you’re lonely, gloomy, and blue, the Whisper Man will come for you.), The Whisper Man will surely be one to shout about when it hits Netflix on 28 August. We’ll be sleeping with the lights on until then…
