Supernatural Folk Horror THE WHISTLER Starring Diane Guerrero & Juan Pablo Raba Haunts Theaters April 17

Diane Guerrero (Doom Patrol, Orange Is the New Black) and Juan Pablo Raba (Narcos, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.) are haunted by an evil spirit in The Whistler.

A character-driven blend of folk horror, supernatural suspense, and cultural resonance, the film opens in select theaters on April 17 via Vertical.

I don’t watch as many comic book television programs as you might suspect I would given how big of a comic fan I have been across my life, as well as by the fact that I host a podcast based on comic book movies.

There are just so many series based on comics, and it’s hard to keep up with all of them. Especially the MCU-based shows. I loved the first few seasons of Daredevil on Netflix, but I haven’t watched either of the Disney-Plus seasons. There are too many such programs now! Series are such a timesink commitment, especially when there are, like, 30 of them.

That said, one that I watched and loved was Doom Patrol! It was zany and brilliantly written and funny and dramatic, and I just dug the hell out of all areas of it. Also, it starred a great many talented performers like Brendan Fraser, but it also featured up-and-comer Diane Guerrero, who is the star of today’s film for review.

The Whistler takes place on a large sugarcane farm property in Venezuela. Guerrero’s character, Nicole, and her husband have returned to his parents’ property in the wake of his father’s death. Things are strained with his mother, but the three of them are mourning in their own ways. Nicole is going through this and a lot more, as she and her husband (Sebastian) had recently lost their daughter, Danny, to a tragic death back home in the states.

During their stay on the farm, though, strange going-on start to brew. The family dog goes missing, as well as several cattle. Sebastian and his mother blame property squatters, but there are those who are more tuned in to local mythology, and they suspect that a creature called The Whistler is behind the troubles for Sebastian’s family… including the death of his father.

TWO UPS AND TWO DOWNS

+ The Whistler is shot really well, and it is a very exceptionally made movie. The tension is built up appropriately through use of camera angles and pans in and out and away. The Whistler is very deliberate in what is shows vis a vis what it doesn’t show, so it knows well how to build up the drama, especially early in the movie when it doesn’t let the viewer get much of a sight of what is going on. Director Diego Velasco is definitely a pro when it comes to knowing what should be seen and how it should look. 

The lighting and everything else on the technical aspects of things are all very solid. You can’t really fault anything from the behind-the-scenes work that went into this film. Again, Velasco had great control of everything from his side of the camera, and he made sure this production looked very polished.

+ Diane Guerrero, a favorite of mine from her days working on Doom Patrol, does a great job portraying her character’s emotions. She goes through a lot in The Whistler, and you feel it along with her each step of the way. She experiences loss and drama and tragedy and horror all across the flick.

She is a highly underrated actress that I will continue to happily follow throughout her career. She isn’t someone who seems exceptionally busy per her Wikipedia filmography section, but I’d love to see that change going forward.

– The first two acts of The Whistler in particular are pretty slow and hard to fully engage with. I credit Velasco with doing an outstanding job of hiding the brutality so it can build in the mind of the viewer, but at the same time, I thought the fist hour-plus was a bit hard to get too committed to. I just wanted more to happen and for the story to feel more cohesive (but more on that latter point in a moment).

I would have loved for the movie to just try a little harder in the first 60 minutes to make me feel like what I was watching was important or thrilling. It was just a little too atmospheric and not enough story-oriented, which is a common complaint I have for modern indie horror.

– The Whistler has a few different angles going on throughout, and it feels like they should all coalesce into one fine storyline point, like so many other films have done in the past. And while, yes, they kind of do, it didn’t feel natural. It felt more like the screenwriters just kind of forced everything to meet up in the late running of the film. I wasn’t satisfied with how the different elements resolved in this one. It’s a shame that the writing did not feel like it was up to the technical aspects I credited above.

OVERALL

The Whistler is much more than competently made, but the story the itself never reached out and grabbed me as much as I wanted it to. The acting across the board (but particularly from Guerrero) is strong and up to the task, though, so there is that.