When you’re a child, you learn simple life lessons, all the common sense advice that keeps us alive. “Look both ways before crossing the street,” that’s a good one. “Don’t stick a fork in an electrical socket,” that’s another. These aren’t mind-blowing life hacks, but they’re handy rules of thumb, and if you want to live, you should probably follow them.
The older we get the less practical advice we receive, so by the time we’re teenagers we’re usually pushing the boundaries of common sense. We stay up late partying, we pull pernicious pranks, and of course of we love, love, love smoking evil whistles. You know, the ones where if you blow on it, you’re hunted to death by a dark specter that takes the form of you, manifested as to how you were originally destined to die. So if you were supposed to suffocate in a swimming pool full of Skittles, you’d be chased around by a ghost who looks just like you, except it’s constantly vomiting Skittles. “Taste the rainbow,” indeed.
In Corin Hardy’s “Whistle” a troubled teen named Chrysanthemum (Dafne Keen) finds one of those bad boys in her new locker at school. The locker used to belong to a basketball player who died under mysterious circumstances six months ago, and I guess nobody thought to return his stuff to his parents that whole time, which to be fair does sound like something a public school in America would do. Anyway, she finds his evil whistle, looking all ancient and gross, and soon one of her friends blows the danged thing, and now everyone’s gonna die.
Of course, everyone actually is going to die eventually. Films like “Whistle” and “Final Destination” and “It Follows,” in which cursed teenagers stare down the living manifestation of mortality, are about how we transition from thinking about death as an abstract concept to obsessing over death as an immediate threat. There’s a moment in everyone’s life where you realize that yes, you are one day going to die, and it’s a real game-changer as far as living is concerned. The best of these supernatural curse movies explore this mentality, usually from the perspective of young people who thought, just a few seconds ago, that they were invincible.
“Whistle” is not the best of these supernatural curse movies. The premise is laughably forced, and since the cursed whistle is rooted in Central American folklore — very, very loosely — it’s got a racist undercurrent that the filmmakers try not to dwell on. The rules of the supernatural danger are mostly lifted from the “Final Destination” movies, and the new additions don’t hang together very well. We’re told the protagonists are hunted by the ghost of their own deaths, and when those ghosts find them they’ll die, but the ghosts find them pretty often and they usually decide to do a jump scare instead of a murder. I guess they know they’re in a movie and that the movie needs padding.
But even though “Whistle” offers nothing new to the supernatural death curse genre, it’s directed by Corin Hardy, and Corin Hardy likes to go hog wild. “Whistle” drips with atmosphere, it’s got a lot of propulsive energy, and most importantly the kills are gnarly as hell. If you were supposed to die in a car crash and your ghost catches you, you’re going to get mangled, hovering in mid-air, without the car, in front of your own parents. I’m not sure why the pain and mutilation parts were necessary, since all that really should matter is the “death” part, but I guess these ancient specters are sticklers for accuracy. You were supposed to die with your arm ripped in half lengthwise, so by golly, that’s how we’re gonna do it. Even in the afterlife, you have to cross your t’s and dot your lower-case j’s.
It’s Dafne Keen’s movie and she’s very generous in sharing it, even though the rest of the ensemble can’t match her charisma. She plays a teenager whose father died while she was overdosing, so she’s got some issues. She also likes to listen to old vinyl records while lying on the ground with the album covers laying around her in a perfect outline, which is weirdly relatable as far as pointless teen posturing goes. She has a romance with another student, played by Sophie Nélisse, and the way they let adolescent love become their whole reason for living is also spot-on.
“Whistle” doesn’t reinvent its genre, and it doesn’t exemplify its genre. It’s just a film in its genre, and it’s a pretty good one. There’s a comfort food quality to Corin Hardy’s direction, where we know what we’re getting, and it’s only cosmetically different from anything else, but it’s made with skill and it satisfies a craving. Or, to put it in another, pithier way: “Whistle” wets your whistle.
“Whistle” is now playing in theaters.
