In recent years the first quarter of the movie calendar has become a favorite time to release a slew of new horror movies. Among this year’s batch is “Whistle”, the latest film from director Corin Hardy and his first since 2018’s “The Nun”. It’s a movie that’s full of potential and ripe with the kind of substance that fan’s of the horror genre look for and relish. Sadly it squanders most of that potential in several frustrating ways.

“Whistle” is written for the screen by Owen Egerton who is adapting his own short story. He pens a tale that is built upon a clever idea but is surrounded with a copy-and-paste horror veneer. The generic high‑school milieu, its coming‑of‑age shallowness, one of the most preposterous character angles I’ve seen in years – it all keeps “Whistle” from being scary, interesting, original, or at times even logical.

“Whistle” opens with a prologue where Pellington High School’s star basketball player Mason Raymore (Stephen Kalyn) is incinerated in the locker room shower after being chased by a terrifying burning figure. It’s a horrific death which is witnessed by several of Mason’s teammates. Hardy uses it to set the table and to prime his audience for what’s to come….sort of.

Six months later me meet Chrys (Dafne Keen), a quiet and reserved teen who just moved to town after a life-changing tragedy. On her first day at Pellington High her cousin Rel (Sky Yang) introduces her to his friends, Grace (Ali Skovbye), Dean (Jhaleil Swaby), and Ellie (Sophie Nelisse). The don’t remotely seem like the kind of kids who would hang out together, but they fit the common horror movie archetypes – the nerd, the blond hottie, the brain-dead jock, and the smart girl.

Everyone at school seems to have moved right on from the Mason incident. So much so that no one even thought to clean out his old locker, which is assigned to Chrys. Inside of it Chrys finds an ornate Aztecan whistle which her teacher, Mr. Craven (Nick Frost) immediately takes to study. But the whistle find its way back to the teens who can’t resist blowing it, unleashing an ancient evil entity that curses them all to death.

Basically here is how the curse works. Everyone within the piercing earshot of its sound are cursed with facing whatever future death fate has chosen for them. After they “summon” the death, it stalks them, often ending in some gloriously gruesome fashion. Thoughts of “Final Destination” are unavoidable. But Hardy and Egerton have a few of their own cards to play. Regrettably not all of them work.

While “Whistle” is plagued by several disappointing choices, its most outrageous one comes with the character Noah (Percy Hynes White), a psychotic drug-dealing youth pastor who pops up at the most random times. He’s an utterly weightless inclusion who adds nothing to the movie other than a convenient antagonist. He would be easy to laugh off if not for the decision to wedge him into the film’s climactic ending.

Sadly “Whistle” is yet another trite chiller about a generic batch of kids who pay the consequences for their own foolish curiosity. Despite the film’s efforts, the underdeveloped and weakly defined characters never register beyond surface level. So we barely feel a thing when they are offed in an array of creatively gory ways. And we feel even less during the ludicrous, scare-free big finish and the franchise-teasing mid-credits scene. No thanks. I think one blow of the whistle was enough for me.

VERDICT – 1.5 STARS