Summer getting too hot for you? Let’s cool things down with a chilling (and chilly) new horror offering from the good folks at Netflix, this one all about a freaky child-killer and the two men hellbent on bringing him down. Now that’s cold.
Based on the New York Times-bestselling novel of the same name by Alex North, James Ashcroft’s “The Whisper Man” stars Robert De Niro, Adam Scott, Michelle Monaghan, Michael Keaton, Hamish Linklater, Owen Teague, Acston Luca Porto, and Will Brill. De Niro and Scott are on hand as an estranged father and son who are brought back together when Scott’s character’s young son is abducted after the pair move back to his sleepy hometown after a horrible tragedy. Monaghan is the tough-as-nails police detective who gets caught up in the case.
And before you wonder, gee, why would someone move their already traumatized kiddo back to the same small town where a creepy child-killer called The Whisper Man killed five kids not so many years ago, we’ve got answers! In the film, Scott’s Tom Kennedy long ago cut ties with his father Pete Willis (De Niro), mostly because the former cop was way too obsessed with his work. That included catching and jailing the so-called Whisper Man. So, see? The kid-killer is long, long gone…
Oops. Per the film’s official logline: “When his eight-year-old son is abducted, a widowed crime writer looks to his estranged father, a retired former police detective, for help, only to discover a connection with the decades-old case of a convicted serial killer known as ‘The Whisper Man.’”
Ashcroft is no stranger to the freaky and the bloody, having previously directed the well-regarded festival hit “The Rule of Jenny Pen” (aka the John Ligthow scary puppet movie) and the truly unnerving serial killer outing “Coming Home in the Dark.”
North is similarly a big name in the scary stories world, though Ashcroft’s film is the first time his crime novels have been adapted for the screen. Should “The Whisper Man” scare up big viewership for the streamer, North might be next in line for the Harlan Coben treatment (read: lots and lots of Netflix adaptations). He’s got a bunch of other books to mine, too, including “The Shadow Friend,” “The Angel Maker,” and “The Half Burnt House.”
“The Whisper Man” will be available to stream on Netflix starting on Friday, August 28. Check out the film’s first trailer below.
