Netflix has delivered a chilling new crime thriller in director James Ashcroft’s film, The Whisper Man. Based on the novel by Alex North, the film follows a grieving crime writer, played by Severance star Adam Scott, who seeks the help of his father, a retired police detective, played by Robert De Niro, to capture a serial killer linked to the disappearance of his young son.
In an interview with Digital Trends, Ashcroft and North talked about developing this dark and haunting crime thriller and the universal message of parenthood it conveys.
This transcript has been edited for length and clarity.
Digital Trends: All right, now to get started, Alex, what was your inspiration for writing The Whisper Man?
North: When I first started it, I wanted to write about fathers and sons, and that was the key thing for me. I had just become a father myself, but I didn’t quite have the way into it to make it into a crime thriller.
And I just moved house. My son must have been about four years old at the time. I was in the kitchen, and I heard him playing in the front room, so I kind of poked my head around the kitchen door to say, “What are you doing?” And he said, “Oh, I’m just playing with the boy in the floor,” which gave me a little bit of a chill. We just moved into this house, and I didn’t really want to renovate. But I also, my writer had thought, “That’s kind of good.”
That gives me a chill. Maybe it will give other people a chill, and that was kind of the way into the story, I suppose. The little boy [in] the story would have imaginary friends, and they might be quite scary in some ways, and there might be some kind of doubt about how real it really were.
Digital Trends: And now, James, you said in an interview that you enjoy telling dark stories on film, and The Whisper Man…it’s really bone-chilling. Was there a specific scene or a plot point in the story that made you say, “Oh, oh, I gotta make this into a movie?”
Ashcroft: Not a specific scene per se, but very much the theme [of] fathers and sons. And the exploration of all of those iterations of relationships throughout the book was very, very strong, and that made a huge impact on me.
That said, there were a couple of moments in there, like the hand coming through the mail slot in the door, which I remember reading. What I love about that is it’s actually fairly innocuous as a moment.
Nothing violent happens, but it’s all, it’s the suggestion of that and that sort of invasion of one’s own space; what you thought was safe isn’t. And I really, really sank my teeth into that aspect, and that’s all throughout the novel as well.
Digital Trends: Were there any particular movies that inspired you when making The Whisper Man? Did you look to any other crime thrillers to craft the world of the film?
Ashcroft: I grew up on films like this, so films like Silence of the Lambs and Se7en made a huge impact. Obviously, Zodiac, which is a true-crime exploration. So I was well-versed in that type of film.
But one thing I really wanted to maintain, and this comes from the novel and the screenplay itself, was that this is a character-driven story. This was a story that was actor-driven, and I knew these were roles that we could get really great talent because of how juicy they were. And I think that’s really what became the point of difference for me from a lot of other films of this type that I’d seen in this genre.
Digital Trends: Absolutely. And concerning the cast, you’ve got a star-studded lineup for this movie. You’ve got Robert De Niro, Michelle Monaghan, Adam Scott, Hamish Linklater, Michael Keaton, and Owen Teague. What was it like working with all these big actors on this film?
