By George & Josh Bate
Clearly, the characters in Whistle have never seen a horror movie before. You stumble upon an ancient Aztec death whistle and decide to whistle into it?!?! What could go wrong?
Thankfully, the characters in Whistle had clearly not seen a horror movie, otherwise audiences would miss out on a clever, engaging, and gruesome cursed object thrill ride. Initially premiering at last year’s Fantastic Fest, Whistle comes from director Corin Hardy (The Nun) and writer Owen Egerton (Blood Fest). The film stars Dafne Keen (Logan, The Acolyte) as Chrysanthemum, a troubled teen who moves in with her cousin (Sky Yang) after the death of her father. Shortly after arriving, Chrys and a group of other high school students (Yellowjacket’s Sophie Nélisse, Once Upon a Time‘s Ali Skovbye, and The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping‘s Jhaleil Swaby) come across an ancient Aztec death whistle and decide to blow into it. What they don’t initially realize is that they’ve just summoned their own deaths. As bodies drop one-by-one, the teens investigate the relic’s history in an effort to prevent their inevitable fates from arriving prematurely.
The HoloFiles recently had the chance to speak with director Corin Hardy about his new movie, the lore behind the titular whistle, the film’s array of gnarly kills (which could not be achieved with AI), making an American high school horror movie, possible ideas for a sequel, and more.
Whistle is clearly not the first cursed object horror movie (look no further than Talk to Me, Christine, Occulus, and so on), but Corin Hardy’s film does something a bit different with the longstanding horror trope. Blending cursed object movies like Talk to Me with Final Destination, Hardy achieves a degree of novelty through a simple, solid mythology of his cursed object.
Essentially, the death whistle works like this: if you blow into the relic and hear its whistle, the death that you’re supposed to experience at some point in the future arrives early. For instance, if you’re destined to die by being burned alive in decades time, the timeline of your death will expedite and you will be burned alive in the immediate future. It’s a slight, yet clever spin on the cursed object trope that clearly draws upon Final Destination in having its teen leads try to prevent the deaths they are destined to endure. A tight script from Owen Egerton ensures that the rules of the death whistle are expressed succinctly and clearly, subverting any issues in being bogged down by convoluted mythology.
“It’s definitely one of the main aspects of Owen Egerton’s script that stood out to me straight away was this succinct, scary but also fascinating mythology surrounding an object which I hadn’t seen put on screen before,” Hardy stated. “I wasn’t familiar with [the Aztec death whistle], but I then did a lot of research and was really even more intrigued and drawn in by the fact that it’s a real object and there’s a lot of mystery surrounding it.”
Hardy continued to reflect on Whistle‘s enticing hook. “It also had this sort of chilling aspect to do with grief and death, which is your death is out there,” the filmmaker remarked. “It knows when it happens and what it’s going to be. And this [whistle] is going to call upon it and bring it to happen in the next few days.”
The victims of the titular whistle are a group of mismatched high school students, led by Logan and The Acolyte star Dafne Keen. Hardy discussed how he has long wanted to make an American high school movie that draws influence from some of his favorite horror movies featuring high school students. “Nightmare on Elm Street was a big one,” Hardy stated. “And The Lost Boys was a key one, although it doesn’t take place in high school….Lost Boys was a good touchstone. And I asked the cast to watch it because it was sort of like young cast ensemble going through an experience. In that case, obviously vampires, but there’s an energy going on… There’s a lot of music and there’s emotions pouring out of everyone, so [Whistle] was like getting a chance to play in that world that’s established American high school but have this death curse surrounding all of them.”
As the film’s premise suggests, deaths come think and fast in Whistle. But, in a post-Terrifier landscape of horror cinema, it can be difficult to astonish or truly shock genre fans nowadays with innovative kills. Hardy seemingly took this as a challenge as he executes some of the most creative and gruesome kill sequences in recent horror movie history. “That was obviously [a key] part of what drew me to wanting to make Whistle was these elaborate death sequences,” Hardy recounted. “And figuring out how to create them was a sort of challenge that I relish as someone who loves particularly practical effects and really figuring out the DNA of a death sequence with puppetry or animatronics or prosthetics or visual effects and having a stand-in or a body double or a contortionist. There was a good number of [deaths] so it was a lot to take on and pull off and I wanted there to be its own sort of trajectory within the deaths so that you can’t have one early on that takes over its mark and renders the others less potent.”
To actualize the various deaths, Hardy and his Toronto production crew relied heavily on practical effects. This entailed working in -15 degree weather, having actors dressed in full body suits that obscured their vision and hearing, and even having the entire crew running around with straw bales to cover up snow on the ground. For Hardy, using practical filmmaking techniques was important, especially in an industry increasingly encroached upon by AI. “In the day and age we’re in at the moment, something could be AI and you wouldn’t really necessarily know or not,” acknowledged Hardy. “I don’t find any excitement whatsoever in the idea of using something like AI, both because I love creating the actual effects for real, the effects that AI would rip off and recreate. But it’s part of what is exciting about human filmmaking, the connection with other talented people.”
Without giving anything away, Whistle features a mid-credits scene that plays similarly to the tag at the end of Smile 2 in going grander with the film’s concept, ramping up the stakes significantly, and leaving one wanting to know how the next chapter of this story unfolds. Hardy and screenwriter Owen Egerton have already discussed possible ideas for a follow-up to their film. “One thing I’d love to do is take the story back to its origins perhaps,” Hardy said. “I mean, if if this whistle got in a villainous person’s hands, it’d be used in a very different way. Or if it got into the hands of the president of America, that would make an interesting sequel. And I’m not saying any of those stories are our ideas, but yeah, I think there’s more to tell for sure if we get the chance to.”
The idea of an Aztec death whistle falling into the hands of the president of the United States? Sign us up. Whether that particular concept comes to fruition or something else entirely, here’s hoping that Whistle receives a follow-up in the near future. While horror is filled to the brim with cursed object movies, director Corin Hardy’s film intelligently draws upon a variety of influences to tell a unique and interesting tale that will make for great spooky season viewing.”
Whistle is in theaters February 6
