Joining the esteemed company of such films as “The Bye Bye Man,” “The Empty Man,” “Slender Man,” and “The Snowman” comes “The Whisper Man,” a disposable Netflix thriller that, in the ‘90s, probably would have been good for one weekend atop the box office before falling off a cliff. Nowadays, it’s simply streaming fodder, the kind of movie designed to occupy the top spot on Netflix for a few days before disappearing into the algorithm. Still, when you get a cast that includes Adam Scott, Michelle Monaghan, Robert De Niro, and Michael Keaton, you’re going to get my attention. Sadly, this dreary riff on the David Fincher procedural playbook is about as boring and timid as its generic title suggests. I was yearning for something with a little more oomph, especially considering director James Ashcroft’s “Coming Home in the Dark” rocked my socks off at Sundance in 2021.
The premise is about as familiar as they come, involving serial killers, missing children, buried family trauma, and a desaturated color palette to really hammer home that gloom-and-doom atmosphere. The way the plotting unfolds, you’d think “The Whisper Man” was hurtling toward some shocking last-minute revelation that might justify how carefully it keeps arranging its pieces, but it eventually arrives at exactly the cookie-cutter, tidy conclusion you’ve been expecting. That’s especially disappointing coming from Ashcroft, whose previous work benefited enormously from its unpredictability and willingness to make the audience uncomfortable. Here, he’s operating within such rigid genre parameters that even the movie’s supposedly sinister detours feel preordained.
It’s based on a book by Alex North, because of course it is, and the movie, to its credit, doesn’t drag nor is it particularly painful to sit through. The problem is that it struggles to stretch its paper-thin characters beyond their superficial archetypes. Central to all of this is Tom (Adam Scott), an author whose writing seems heavily informed by his own repressed daddy issues, and who has relocated with his young son Jake to his hometown following the death of his wife. Coincidentally, he returns just as a child-snatching killer is on the loose, plucking kids from their bedrooms after they make the unfortunate mistake of leaving their windows cracked.
The killer appears to be a copycat, mirroring the methods of the now-imprisoned Frank (Michael Keaton), who was captured years earlier by Pete (Robert De Niro), the detective responsible for putting him away and, wouldn’t you know it, Tom’s estranged father. When Jake becomes the latest victim, Tom is forced to confront both his past and his fractured relationship with Pete, enlisting his father’s help alongside hungry detective Amanda (Michelle Monaghan) as they race to find the boy before he becomes another casualty.
There’s a certain appreciation I have for the post-“Se7en” era of these kinds of thrillers. James Patterson used plenty of the same mechanics in his Alex Cross novels, while movies like “Identity,” “Taking Lives,” and “The Bone Collector” understood how to dress up pulpy B-movie serial killer material for the big screen. Hell, does anyone remember 2000’s “The Watcher,” with Keanu Reeves? These movies weren’t necessarily masterpieces, but the better ones knew exactly what they were selling: nasty murders, ridiculous twists, movie-star performances, and enough atmosphere to make the whole thing feel a little sleazier and more dangerous than it actually was.
“The Whisper Man” desperately needs some of that personality. It doesn’t have the sheen of those earlier films, nor does it get enough mileage out of its impressive cast. For most of the movie, save for his one scene opposite Keaton, De Niro seems content to go through the motions, offering a performance that feels less lived-in than contractually obligated. When Keaton finally shows up for his extended cameo, however, the movie briefly snaps to attention. His presence injects the proceedings with the menace and unpredictability they’ve otherwise been sorely lacking, and his confrontation with De Niro is one of the few instances where “The Whisper Man” actually keeps us on edge.
Otherwise, it’s mostly standard genre fare. Scott, in his second leading role this year in a horror-adjacent joint
following “Hokum,” does what he can with Tom, cycling through grief, fear, desperation, and plenty of paternal anguish as he searches for his son. But the script is so janky, the revelations so hokey, and the characterization so thin that it becomes difficult to invest in his arc beyond the basic understanding that, yes, obviously we would like this father to find his missing child. There’s an opportunity here to make Tom’s strained relationship with Pete the emotional backbone of the movie, especially as one generation of damaged fatherhood collides with another, but “The Whisper Man” treats that material with roughly the same depth as everything else. It exists primarily to service the mechanics of the mystery rather than deepen them.
And again, this is all perfectly fine for the Netflix Friday-night crowd. There’s a place for movies like “The Whisper Man,” and streaming is probably exactly it. It’s competently made, recognizable actors wander in and out, the mystery keeps moving, and two hours later you can move on with your life. But there’s virtually no replay value and precious little here that lingers once the credits roll. Seeing De Niro sleepwalk through another gloomy serial killer thriller at least brought back memories of 2005’s equally numbing “Hide and Seek,” but even that movie understood the value of going completely bonkers with a third-act twist people still remember two decades later. “The Whisper Man” can’t even muster that kind of audacity. For a movie about a killer whose entire gimmick revolves around getting inside your head, it’s remarkable how quickly this one leaves it.
THE WHISPER MAN is now streaming on Netflix.