A Muddled Tone Drags Down A Potentially Compelling Thriller

Thrillers can be a tricky beast, especially in the cinematic space. The best examples are able to blend painful human drama and tense situations with the dread and scares of a good horror movie. It’s finding that tonal balance that makes or breaks a good thriller, especially one that overtly draws from all of those disparate genres.

The Whisper Man has a couple of strong central ideas, all rooted in what should be a solid thematic core. However, the adaptation of Alex North’s book of the same name can’t keep itself properly focused enough to be effective.

Decades after the child abductor and murderer known as the Whisper Man was found and arrested by Detective Pete Willis (Robert De Niro), someone is repeating his methods. His latest target is Jake (Acston Luca Porto), the son of Pete’s estranged son Tom (Adam Scott). Despite their tension, Tom and Pete find themselves working together and alongside the committed Detective Amanda Beck (Michelle Monaghan) to figure out the killer’s identity before Jake becomes their latest victim.

Despite a lot of compelling ideas and committed performers, this Netflix movie struggles to really land on a consistent tone or sense of character. This muddied throughline leaves some characters too basic and the plot twists too broad. It’s too bad, because the ingredients for something special are there, but they never really coalesce into a compelling whole. While the cast does what they can to elevate The Whisper Man, it’s not enough to fix the underlying problems with the overall execution.

The Whisper Man Holds Itself Back

Director/writer James Ashcroft uses the premise to set up a lot of potential narrative and thematic paths for The Whisper Man to take. Unfortunately, that ambition ends up being a weight around the movie’s neck. This is especially true with the direction and cinematography, which too often feel muted and forgettable.

The movie is best when it’s a grounded drama about generational trauma, Jake grappling with his faults, and Tom reevaluating how he’s always perceived his father. Those dramatic touches are when the film is most compelling – especially once the original Whisper Man enters the picture.

A Hannibal Lecter-coded prisoner who maintains a level of respect for his captor, Frank Carter’s scenes with Pete and Amanda are tense, intriguing, and compelling. However, the movie only spends a few scenes with that dynamic. The tension between Tom and Pete could likely carry an entire movie if given the chance, but is likewise moved on from too quickly.

Instead, the film too often tries to embody a more overt horror movie, with off-screen brutality meant to unnerve the audience often failing to ever really connect. That’s not even bringing up the strange Hamish Linklater character, who feels like he’s pulled from another narrative entirely, or the supernatural touches that are on the edges of the narrative.

The movie never quite finds the proper balance between those elements. It feels less like a cohesive narrative and more like a rudderless story about bad things happening to people for little clear reason. Even the direction can’t tell if it wants to be grounded or tense, with a lack of consistent visual design.

The Whisper Man Fails To Match Its Potential

David Lee/Netflix

It’s a shame; the cast is clearly here to play. Adam Scott does good dramatic work as Tom, while Robert De Niro brings a strong, understated sense of regret and haunted memory to Pete. Michelle Monaghan does what she can with a relatively one-note detective, infusing her with a stern, stoic fury that makes her an engaging foil to those around her.

The Whisper Man is too tonally messy to really reach the full potential of the cast.

Ultimately, the ambition to make The Whisper Man everything leaves it feeling like nothing special. Those stumbles trip up the narrative and leave it stalling for time, when it should be ratcheting up tension or pumping the brakes on the drama to reveal some new clue about the mystery. The Whisper Man isn’t quite worth the sum of its parts, even if those parts have real potential.

It feels like a movie that, with a steadier focus, could have been a strong peer to other classics of the genre like The Silence of the Lambs or Zodiac. Instead, we’re left with a film that never quite realizes its potential and goes out with a whimper (or, more fittingly, a whisper) rather than a bang.