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In crime-thriller terms, Alex North’s bestselling 2019 debut novel, “The Whisper Man,” has it all — a terrific title, a psycho serial killer (complete with his own urban-legend jingle), a winsome and endangered child, a possible ghost and lots of family trauma.
For the film adaptation, premiering Friday on Netflix, you can add a truly banging cast that includes Robert De Niro, Adam Scott, Michelle Monaghan and Michael Keaton.
In the race to replace the notion of “TV movie” with streaming-only films that could, in another era, compete at the box office, “The Whisper Man” is as good as it gets. While it does not achieve the depth or brilliance of its obvious influences — “The Silence of the Lambs,” “The Sixth Sense” — it is a twisty and very welcome reminder of an age when psychological adrenaline-thumpers like “Kiss the Girls” and “The Bone Collector” drew crowds to the cineplex.
Directed by James Ashcroft and written by Ben Jacoby and Chase Palmer, “The Whisper Man” has been moved from the U.K. to the U.S., and opens with an overhead shot of an autumn woodland in New Jersey. The day is drear, the music ominous — and with good reason. Within the trees, Det. Amanda Beck (Monaghan) is overseeing the search for a missing boy only to find the corpse of another.
Unaware of this sinister preamble, Tom Kennedy (Scott) is moving into the area with his young son, Jake (Acston Luca Porto). They have sorrows of their own — a wife and mother recently lost to cancer — and have decided to start fresh in the town where she and Tom grew up. If their new Craftsman-style house seems overlarge for two, with plenty of shelter-mag built-ins, well, Tom is a successful crime novelist and there’s also a leaky attic and a creepy, warrenlike basement to be dealt with.
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Tom, a loving but overwhelmed father, is clearly going for some vision of small-town homey, a place to nurse his own pain while figuring out how to single-parent the quiet, creative Jake, who fears stairs and regularly chats with an imaginary friend known as the girl in the blue sweater.
Who is, according to Jake, not as thrilled with the house as they are.
While Jake copes with a new school and Tom unpacks, Amanda continues her investigation only to realize that the dead and missing boys bear certain hallmarks of “the Whisper Man” — a serial killer who abducted and killed five boys 20 years ago and remains so well-known that she can still repeat the very sinister little poem associated with him.
The obvious next step is reaching out to the now-retired detective who put the Whisper Man in jail — back then, Det. Inspector Pete Willis (De Niro) had theorized an accomplice. Now he’s not so sure, and though still clearly haunted by the original case (and continuing to search for the body of a fifth missing boy), Pete insists that there’s nothing he can do to help Amanda.
Until Jake is taken. Things have not been going well in the new place — a squatter has apparently been living in the basement, and Jake’s habit of murmuring to his imaginary friend leads Tom to ignore a truly terrifying incident that would have led any other parent to call the police. So when he discovers Jake is missing, Tom feels guilty as well as frantic. In desperation, he reveals that Willis is, in fact, his estranged father and, in a moving reunion/confrontation, he demands that Willis help find the boy: “You were a s— father but a really good detective.”
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As a terrified, grieving and furious father trying to control an uncontrollable situation, Scott is on fire here, and De Niro, who can convey emotional volumes with raised palm and a tightly closed mouth, gives him plenty of room to work. Wary and watchful, Pete wants to reconnect with his son, but he has carried his own grief and fury for so long that they have become more shield than catalyst. But with unfinished business as both a detective and a father, he joins Amanda and his son in a race to find Jake.
