The Whisper Man Review: Scott and De Niro Elevate a Familiar Thriller With Atmospheric Dread

By all accounts, The Whisper Man is your standard dark serial killer thriller that puts a premium on mood and violence, especially when it comes to the overwrought and bloody closing third act. Yet this is one of those genre pictures where the rule is: if you love them, you have to love mainstream fair. That is easier when the story, an accessible studio-style genre, is elevated by a superb cast.

That type of film is prominent on streaming; after filling our multiplexes for decades, it now calls Netflix home. No, The Whisper Man does not have the unusual raw power of The Silence of the Lambs and the hypnotic dread of Zodiac. Still, the new film has pacing, atmosphere, tone, and a strong procedural engine that keeps audiences hooked until its unusual, poignant finale.

The story follows Tom Kennedy (Severance‘s Adam Scott), a recent widower and crime novelist who has found himself with a wicked case of writer’s block. He decides to move to a town called Garrenton, where he and his wife grew up. He and his son, Jake (Acston Luca Porto), are looking for a fresh start, since both are still mourning.

What is Netflix’s The Whisper Man about?

However, what they don’t know is that there has been a string of child murders in the area. Before Tom and Jake even pull into their new home, Detective Beck (Michelle Monaghan) leads a search party across a field for a missing child. They find one, brutally murdered with their face intentionally covered, but not the child police are searching for.

As soon as they move in, they get unwanted visitors, like a blue-gloved hand reaching through the mail slot in their front door. Later that rainy night, Jake goes missing. Fearing he’s been abducted, Tom contacts his father, Pete (Robert De Niro), a retired detective who worked a decades-old case involving the Whisper Man murders.

However, that case was solved, but the similarities are awfully familiar, so much so that Detective Beck visited Pete the night before. Are the two cases connected? Is this the work of a copycat? Soon, they encounter a gallery of shady suspects, including a macabre collector of serial-killer memorabilia, a town loner, and a man Pete once put behind bars.

Netflix’s The Whisper Man Review

The Whisper Man is from director James Ashcroft, who previously found success with Australian thrillers like Coming Home in the Dark. The film adapts Alex North’s chilling must-read of the same name. While the film version doesn’t capture the same level of menace, Ashcroft finds the right amount of atmospheric dread to sustain unease throughout.

Much of that credit goes to cinematographer Peter Deming, who has worked with Hollywood titans like David Lynch, Sam Raimi, and Wes Craven, including on Lynch’s masterpiece Mulholland Drive. Ashcroft entrusts Deming with darkness, ominous negative space, and visual isolation that create a gripping mood. The result is, at times, unnerving and truly haunting.

The cast is good here, elevating the material, with Scott, Monaghan, and De Niro doing what the roles require. I won’t mention the supporting players who portray the various suspects because of some ridiculous embargo rules set by the studio, even though their names are already all over the internet. However, the actor playing the Whisper Man is a surprisingly inspired choice.

Is Netflix’s The Whisper Man worth watching?

Yes, the screenplay toes the line with red herrings. Still, it does so in a way that keeps the story moving and fairly unpredictable, without feeling totally artificial or, at worst, arbitrary. However, as the plot unfolds and the connections come to light, you begin to wonder how everyone involved knew that Scott’s character was moving back into town in the first place.

Yes, Ben Jacoby (The First Omen) and Chase Palmer’s (It) script fails to address it, but the immersive atmosphere makes you hardly question it. (It also helps that they never bring it up.) Then there is the matter of children going missing, which automatically brings a level of grim intensity. To the filmmaking team’s credit, they never truly fumble those moments.

That is why The Whisper Man works: it understands how to manipulate tension through escalation. Depending on your level of sophistication, your enjoyment of the film will vary. However, the experience also has an unusual ending: a small sleight of hand that surprises you with an almost spiritual, profound reflection and even reaffirmation—something I’ve never seen in a thriller and will never see again.

You can stream The Whisper Man exclusively on Netflix starting August 28th!

The Whisper Man Review: Scott and De Niro Elevate a Familiar Thriller With Atmospheric Dread