{"id":583054,"date":"2026-08-28T14:22:16","date_gmt":"2026-08-28T14:22:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/583054\/"},"modified":"2026-08-28T14:22:16","modified_gmt":"2026-08-28T14:22:16","slug":"the-whisper-man-review-netflix-thriller-is-predictable-satisfying","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/583054\/","title":{"rendered":"The Whisper Man Review: Netflix Thriller Is Predictable, Satisfying"},"content":{"rendered":"

I don\u2019t want to get ahead of myself but the existence of James Ashcroft\u2019s \u201cThe Whisper Man,\u201d a three-star serial killer thriller with an all-star cast and a portentous attitude, can only mean one thing: The 1990s are back, baby! Yeah!<\/p>\n

So put on your Hammer pants, crank up the Ace of Base and get ready to watch the latest movie in the vein of \u201cJennifer 8,\u201d \u201cKnight Moves,\u201d \u201cDesperate Measures\u201d and eh, let\u2019s say \u201cThe Bone Collector.\u201d If you\u2019re wondering why I didn\u2019t mention \u201cThe Silence of the Lambs,\u201d \u201cSe7en\u201d or \u201cCopycat,\u201d all I can say is we didn\u2019t get that lucky. \u201cThe Whisper Man\u201d is solid but it\u2019s hardly a diamond.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Whisper Man\u201d stars Adam Scott as Tom Kennedy, a crime thriller novelist who moves back to his hometown after his wife dies. Tom\u2019s eight year-old son Jake (Acston Luca Porto) is a sensitive soul, and sees a mysterious girl in a blue sweater wherever he goes. His father doesn\u2019t think this is important. You\u2019d think after writing all those airport novels he might notice when he\u2019s living inside one.<\/p>\n

Decades earlier, Tom\u2019s estranged father Pete Willis (Robert De Niro), was a detective who apprehended a serial killer called The Whisper Man. The murderer is still in prison but the murders have somehow begun all over again, so that\u2019s not good. When the new Whisper Man abducts Jake, Tom reluctantly asks Peter to return to the case. They team up with Detective Amanda Beck (Michelle Monaghan) to tie up the loose ends of a mystery they thought was already solved.<\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Wile\t\t\t\t\t<\/a><\/p>\n

James Ashcroft recently directed \u201cThe Rule of Jenny Pen<\/a>,\u201d starring Geoffrey Rush and John Lithgow, which was one of the more ghoulish and impressively-acted thrillers in recent memory. This time he\u2019s got a bigger ensemble but the material isn\u2019t as juicy. Only Michael Keaton and Hamish Linklater, playing potential suspects, were offered any scenery on which to chew. They greedily gobble it up, of course, and no one can blame them, but it would have been polite if they\u2019d left some table scraps for their co-stars.<\/p>\n

Adam Scott, best known for his comedic work, dives right into the emotional whirlpool, weaponizing his hard-won cache of lovability to make our hearts break for him. He succeeds. Meanwhile De Niro and Monaghan are so focused on their jobs, in the story and outside of it, that they never come out of their shells. They\u2019re here to catch a killer and do as little introspection and chit-chat as possible. We can admire their work ethic while still wishing we\u2019d gotten to know them better, since it would have made us more invested in both their characters and their work.<\/p>\n

Unless you\u2019re watching or reading a mystery by one of the great masters of the genre, there\u2019s a period of time in every whodunnit where the audience isn\u2019t sure if the story is smart yet. \u201cThe Whisper Man\u201d spends a lot of time setting up the possibilities, tossing out little details that may or may not be important later, and dumping out giant ice buckets full of bright, vermillion herrings. As we take stock of this whodunnit\u2019s inventory we entertain the possibility that \u201cThe Whisper Man\u201d will pull all these pieces together and wow us with its clockwork ingenuity. But we\u2019re also experiencing some impatient dread, as we wait to find out whether the film\u2019s house of cards was built too close to a rotating fan.<\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Jacob\t\t\t\t\t<\/a><\/p>\n

It turns out \u201cThe Whisper Man\u201d isn\u2019t particularly devious. The solutions to its puzzles range from mildly surprising to disappointingly predictable. If you\u2019re paying close attention you\u2019ll see right though most of its mysteries. Then again the film is a Netflix Original, so they\u2019re wagering you aren\u2019t paying much attention at all. If you\u2019re only half-watching \u201cThe Whisper Man\u201d while catching up on your Wordles you could confuse its solemnity with dramatic gravity, or its lack of foolishness with real intelligence. It\u2019s a three-star film with a four-star veneer, but at least parts of it are \u2014 please forgive me for getting technical here \u2014 super-duper creepy.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Whisper Man\u201d doesn\u2019t make space for the thrilling mid-film set pieces this genre usually relies on to periodically build and release tension. Instead Ashcroft keeps the film on a low flame, which eventually cooks the steak but denies his audience the delectable, crunchy sear which transforms acceptable dishes into mouth-watering treats. It\u2019s just one of the many problems \u201cThe Whisper Man\u201d has that don\u2019t make it bad but do prevent it from being great.<\/p>\n

\u201cNot bad\u201d isn\u2019t, by definition, a bad thing, and \u201cThe Whisper Man\u201d can get by on it. This is a welcome throwback to a genre that didn\u2019t so much die, it just stopped getting the royal treatment. Oh, how we long for an era when we could take films like \u201cThe Whisper Man\u201d for granted, instead of thanking our lucky stars that an above-average serial killer thriller with a respectable cast was made at all.<\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"\t\t\t\t\t<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I don\u2019t want to get ahead of myself but the existence of James Ashcroft\u2019s \u201cThe Whisper Man,\u201d a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":583055,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[26958,156,286947,27446,286948,1094,111,139,69,59125,260141],"class_list":["post-583054","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-adam-scott","tag-entertainment","tag-james-ashcroft","tag-michael-keaton","tag-michelle-monaghan","tag-netflix","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-robert-de-niro","tag-the-whisper-man"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/583054","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=583054"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/583054\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/583055"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=583054"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=583054"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=583054"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}