Prime Time: Whistle (2025)

There are many fine examples of whistling throughout the horror genre. Okay, there's one, but it's one that casts a mighty shadow. That one is the great M. R. James tale, adapted a number of times (most notably with Michael Hordern in the lead role). And now we have Whistle, a film based around an Aztec death whistle. It causes very bad things to happen to anyone who hears it being blown. You would think that the easiest thing to do would be to just not blow it, but then we'd have no movie.

Written by Owen Egerton and directed by Corin Hardy, two people who should already be known to horror fans, this is a teen horror movie interested in doing nothing more than being a teen horror movie. It's not very good, but it at least clears the low bar that it sets for itself.

A group of students end up in possession with a skull-shaped whistle. They soon find out that anyone who hears it ends up dying, but not in a normal way. They are actually visited by an apparition of their future selves, and die in the way they were due to die in the future. And so begins a race against time, the teens eventually realising what is happening and then trying to figure out if there's a way to stop it.

The screenplay is the problem here. Egerton has a fun idea, but doesn't do enough to make the most of it. This should have been full of impressive set-pieces, blood and gore thrown around in lieu of any proper scares, but it's a disappointingly bloodless affair, for the most part. The one major highlight just serves to remind viewers of how weak the rest of the film is. It doesn't help that none of the characters are very interesting, not even the leads (played by Dafne Keen and Sophie Nélisse), and also doesn't help that the cast give such flat performances.

Neither Keen nor Nélisse manage to feel like the best casting choices here, but the same can be said of almost everyone in the cast, from Sky Yang and Jhaleil Swaby to Ali Skovbye and Percy Hynes White. Even the "star cameo" from Nick Frost feels like a role that could have had someone better there (perhaps someone with more of a presence in the horror genre).

I am happy to enjoy some dumb fun, not every film needs to be layered and deep. I expected to be an easy mark for Whistle. It's a shame that it couldn't do better when it comes to the simple pleasures I was hoping for. Considering how forgiving I often am, or am often accused of being, the fact that I can't even bring myself to rate this as anything more than average should serve as a warning to those who are a bit more discerning with their viewing choices. It should still just about work for those wanting a slick and mindless distraction for 100 minutes though. 

5/10

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Prime Time: My Old Ass (2024)

Here's the thing about My Old Ass, and I'll refrain from making any jokes that confuse the title with what I view as my actual old ass. It's a cute film. There's some nice comedy. There's also some decent emotional weight throughout. It's good stuff. But writer-director Megan Park set herself a very high bar with her debut feature, The Fallout. I would recommend My Old Ass to people after an enjoyable distraction for an hour and a half, but I would recommend The Fallout to anyone wanting to explore strong and intelligent cinema that ranks up there with the best films from the last decade.

Maisy Stella plays Elliott, a young woman looking forward to the time when she can soon leave home and start what her adult life. Before that time comes, however, she decides to have some fun time with her friends (Ruthie, played by Maddie Ziegler, and Ro, played by Kerrice Brooks) and has some magic mushrooms. That doesn't just lead to the usual strange and trippy experience. It leads to Elliott having a meeting with her older self (Aubrey Plaza). Older Elliott tries to get her younger self to start appreciating the time with her family more, and also warns her against spending time with a young man named Chad. That's okay, Elliott doesn't know anyone named Chad. And then, inevitably, Elliott meets Chad (Percy Hynes White).

It's worth noting here that Megan Park is 38 years old. So she may have been a bit younger than that when she wrote this screenplay, and she was even younger when she gave us The Fallout. You wouldn't know that from the final product though, with both films displaying a maturity and thoughtfulness that make both much better than they otherwise would have been. The fact that My Old Ass wasn't more focused on the potential comedy of the premise was a pleasant surprise to me, as was a finale that had equal respect for the wisdom that comes with older age and the fearlessness that can often be found in the young.

Stella, making her feature acting debut, is excellent in the lead role, just the right amount of energy and carefree spirit tempered with a good nature that stops her from being irritating. Plaza works well as her older incarnation, and she gives another solid turn, another in a growing list of performances that allows her to move a step away from the eye-rolling and morbid snark that looked in danger of becoming her entire range for a few years. White is very sweet, although viewers are wary of him throughout most of the runtime, simply due to him being named Chad, and Ziegler and Brooks are well-cast as the friends, with the latter having a bit more screentime, and always brightening up the screen whenever she's around. Elliott's family are played by Maria Dizzia (mother), Alain Goulem (father), Seth Isaac Johnson (brother), and Carter Trozzolo (younger brother), and all four do well as they loiter at the edge of the central narrative, eventually moving more towards the centre as our lead starts to appreciate them more and consider how she can still value what is around her while looking forward to her future.

There's nothing here that really stands out. The technique on display, the look and sound of everything, it's all just perfectly fine, working in service of a script that uses a cute idea at the heart of it without making things extra complicated. But Park writes with a great knack of being able to blend emotion and intelligence in a way that is satisfying for film fans without ever feeling too patronising. She also brings great performances out of her leads, perhaps due to her own time spent in front of the camera for projects that range from a Romero zombie movie to standard Christmas TV movie fluff. Cinema can take us to previously-unimagined worlds and show us great marvels, but it's equally enjoyable when it gives people a group of actors all working with quality writing. Park is two for two when it comes to features that she has directed. I hope she soon makes it three for three, whether staying in this kind of film or taking us on a tour of some more fantastical sights.

7/10

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Netflix And Chill: Our House (2018)

Science is great. If applied correctly. We could eradicate every major world problem. Alternatively, science can also provide some very unexpected results. It’s never the best day at the lab when you end up accidentally creating ghosts while putting the finishing touches on a device that is supposed to generate electricity from nothing. Unfortunately, that is what happens to Ethan (Thomas Mann), the lead character in Our House.

When we first meet Ethan, he is so busy trying to finish his important experiment that he is unable to spend much time with his parents and siblings. That soon changes when he receives a phone call to inform him that his parents have died in an automobile accident. He now has to be the main carer for Matt (Percy Hynes White) and Becca (Kate Moyer). It's not long until some of them start to sense another presence in the house, which they suspect could be their deceased parents trying to communicate with them. And they seem to grow more powerful when Ethan turns his "failed experiment" back on.

Based on a film that was itself less than a decade old (Ghost From The Machine, by Matt Osterman), Our House is a film with plenty of potential for good atmosphere and scares. To be fair, there are some good moments here and there, and the visual representation of the spirits, as black smoke trying to solidify themselves into a humanoid form, works well. Director Anthony Scott Burns had been honing his craft for a number of years before making this his feature debut (including delivering "Father's Day", one of the better segments in the anthology horror Holidays) and he handles things well enough. He just doesn't seize the opportunity to fill up every space with growing tension and creepiness.

Writer Nathan Parker doesn't help. The central idea is a very easy one to communicate to viewers, freeing everyone up to focus on scares, but he decides to give an equal amount of time to the day-to-day problems that our lead experiences while moving from the role of brother to that of main guardian. I understand why he would want to do that, but it's never as engaging as the developing spookiness. Like many films, this sits in a middle ground. It would either need to be streamlined into a fantastic frightfest, paring down the family drama to something minimal, or the runtime could be expanded slightly to allow more time spent showing the strain and tension affecting everyone while the spirits start to push their way into their plane.

Mann is a decent lead, and both White and Moyer are believable in their respective roles. Nicola Peltz plays Hannah and Robert B. Kennedy is a neighbour named Tom. Both do fine, but they can't overcome the fact that their characters feel superfluous to requirements. The same can be said for Marie, a different neighbour played by Marcia Bennett. I may be wrong, but the film could have been greatly improved if the main characters felt isolated and trapped in their house as things began to get worse and worse.

Although it's perfectly okay for most of the runtime, things are dragged down by an ending that feels horribly rote and unengaging. It's enough to drag the whole thing just below average, and leaves it being something that I wouldn't recommend to others.

4/10

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