THE WHISPER MAN (2026) – It’s Been Done Before—and Better, Much Better!
Rating: ⭐ 1/2
Netflix’s latest original, The Whisper Man, promotes itself as a psychological thriller built around the disturbing premise of a serial killer who preys on young children. On paper, it sounds like the kind of dark, atmospheric mystery that should make for compelling viewing. Unfortunately, the sad reality is that The Whisper Man feels less like an original thriller and more like a rehash—a mix-and-match collection of ideas borrowed from a dozen other, far better-made psychological thrillers, Silence of the Lambs and Se7en to name a few.
There is very little about the story that feels authentic. The plot, characters and dialogue all have an oddly manufactured quality, as though a computer programme had rummaged through the archives of film history, picked out the most familiar thriller tropes and stitched them together into a screenplay. The result is something that looks like a psychological thriller without ever feeling like one.
The biggest problem is that the characters simply do not behave or speak like real people. Secrets are conveniently withheld until the precise moment they are required to advance the narrative, rather than because the characters have any believable reason for keeping them. Motivations are often bizarre, particularly when it comes to some of the key suspects and accomplices, and the twists feel engineered rather than organically developed.
Even more strangely, the film’s depiction of the present day feels completely detached from the world we actually live in. Although the story is supposedly set in 2026, its technological and social landscape feels more like the 1980s. Characters record messages on cassette tapes and physically mail them to the police by snail mail, as though email, instant messaging, cloud storage and smartphones had never been invented. The occasional appearance of a modern handphone is virtually the only reminder that we are supposed to be living in the present. This disconnect becomes increasingly distracting because the film otherwise makes no attempt to explain why its characters are operating in such an antiquated world.
The young actors are also given some difficult material to work with, and the results are uneven. Acston Luca Porto, who plays Adam’s son, has a pivotal role in the story, but the character as written is so oddly conceived that it becomes difficult to connect with him. His mannerisms and behaviour are exaggerated to such an extent that I initially assumed the character was a girl. That is less a criticism of the young actor himself than of the peculiar characterisation he has been given.
Even more problematic is the decision to have the boy communicate with an imaginary and mysterious figure. In a film that is supposedly grounded in psychological horror and a real-world serial-killer investigation, this introduces an almost supernatural dimension that feels completely out of place. Rather than adding another layer of psychological tension, it further distances the story from reality and makes an already implausible narrative feel even more contrived.
And unfortunately, even an impressive cast cannot rescue it. The presence of Academy Award-winning veteran Robert De Niro, Academy Award-nominated Michael Keaton, and Adam Scott—whose brilliant work in Severance has demonstrated just how compelling he can be—does little to prevent the film from collapsing under the sheer weight of its own ludicrousness. There are flashes of the performances one might expect from actors of this calibre, but they are ultimately trapped within a screenplay that gives them very little believable material to work with.
A good psychological thriller should make you question what is real, who can be trusted and what might happen next. The Whisper Man instead leaves you questioning the logic of the characters, their motivations and, ultimately, the world in which the story is taking place.
There are moments when The Whisper Man hints at the dark, unsettling thriller it wants to be. But hints are not enough. Beneath the ominous atmosphere and respectable cast is a story that feels recycled, characters that feel artificial, a strangely outdated depiction of modern life and a screenplay that seems to confuse withholding information with creating suspense.
In the end, The Whisper Man doesn’t whisper anything particularly new. It merely reminds us of how much better the psychological thrillers that came before it was.
