REVIEW: WHISTLE Evokes the Golden Age of High School Horror
Chrys is just like every other high schooler: she loves listening to music, she is trying to make new friends, she has a crush on a girl in the hallway… and she has an ancient Aztec Death Whistle in her locker.
Chrys (short for Chrysanthemum) is the new girl in school. She has just moved from Chicago to a sleepy steel mill town, trying to escape whatever her previous life entailed. Whispers around campus are that she’s a junkie, that she killed her dad, that she just left rehab. But it doesn’t matter what’s true or not, it just matters that she can get through the rest of the school year in one piece. When she is assigned the locker of the star basketball player who mysteriously self-immolated six months ago, it happens to contain a mysterious object: an Aztec Death Whistle.
From there, it’s pretty straightforward: blow the whistle, hear its sound, and death comes for you. A franchise is born?
Whistle, which had its world premiere as the closing night film of Fantastic Fest 2025, doesn’t screen for general audiences until February of next year from IFC and Shudder. But the exceptional scares and heart of the film should carry word-of-mouth until then. English director Corin Hardy (The Nun) told the premiere audience that he wanted this to be a “traditional American high school horror movie, like A Nightmare on Elm Street.” Based on a short story and script by festival favorite Owen Egerton (Mercy Black), Whistle is a gruesome, funny, heartfelt throwback to films like I Know What You Did Last Summer, and in fact, probably more successful in its attempt to cultivate that specific feeling than the aforementioned’s recent legacy sequel.
With any “traditional American high school horror movie,” it is imperative that the young cast manages to be likeable and believable, especially as their day-to-days turn into living nightmares. Luckily for Whistle, its performances are some of its strongest elements. Dafne Keen (Logan) and Sophie Nélisse (Yellowjackets), both up-and-coming genre stars in their own right, are a really wholesome duo, believably navigating both a blossoming queer love story and a terrifying curse. Sky Yang (Rebel Moon) plays the bleached-blonde stoner archetype well, a goofy, sympathetic kid with mannerisms pulled right out of Fast Times at Ridgemont High.
And the whistle itself is a well-designed MacGuffin, begging for a prop replica from some horror collectibles company out there. Its creepy eyes and intricate carvings make it instantly rather iconic, a goofy kind of scary that is treated like its own character. Genre stalwart Nick Frost plays Mr. Craven (get it?), a teacher at the high school who recognizes it as a valuable artifact. Its carvings apparently read: “Summon the dead.” And, once you hear it, the whistle marks you for death – and a particularly gruesome one at that. The now-cursed Breakfast Club of misfits are then thrust into several gory set-pieces, each more thrilling than the last, as they attempt to break the curse by whatever means possible.
The movie wears its inspirations on its sleeve and in its set dressings — whether the aforementioned Mr. Craven, or a pack of Cronenberg cigarettes, Muschetti cigars, or Verhoeven Steel — but it still manages to morph into its own beast by the end of its runtime. The unique, gnarly kills are the standout here, with each death (deservedly) receiving its own curtain call of credits during the end titles. Whistle is well-shot, well-edited, and legitimately scary at times. But perhaps the most scary part of the whole endeavor is script-based: the whistle has no justice, no morality clause. Simply: if you hear its shrieking cry, you die. The lore-building of the curse never breaks, allowing for the full story to be something both engaging and cathartic.
Whistle is a good example of pushing the medium while remaining true to its roots. There is something rather comforting within high school horror, a sub-genre traditionally filled with tropes ripe for self-parody. But Hardy elevates it with actual style, treating the material seriously and with a unique directorial flare. The high school setting has been updated slightly for the 2025 (er, 2026) audience with a good soundtrack of current standouts and covers, but it still feels rather timeless, perhaps still stuck in a previous era of horror. Maybe that’s why I gelled with it so much – simple, effective, scary, and fun. What else could you ask for?
