The Whisper Man (2026):

Director: James Ashcroft
Screenwriters: Ben Jacoby and Chase Palmer, based on the novel by Alex North
Starring: Adam Scott, Robert DeNiro, Michelle Monaghan, Acston Luca Porto

The Plot: Grieving widower Tom (Adam Scott) moves to the small New Jersey town of Garretton with his imaginative young son Jake (Acston Luca Porto) just as a copycat starts abducting children in imitation of the notorious Whisper Man killer from the 1990s (so named for his habit of lurking outside his victims’ windows and whispering to them). When Jake is taken, Tom is forced to team up with his estranged father (Robert DeNiro), who also happens to be the retired police detective who caught the original Whisper Man. Along for the ride is Detective Amanda Beck (Michelle Monaghan), who at least isn’t anyone’s love interest.

The Americanized adaptation of a British airport thriller, The Whisper Man feels like a dull retread of mid-budget serial killer films from the 1990s and early 2000s. Movies not quite on the level of The Silence of the Lambs or Zodiac, but akin to solid genre fare like The Bone Collector or Copycat. With its twisty plot and talented cast, the pieces are in place for The Whisper Man to take its place in the pantheon of “oh yeah, that one was a pretty good movie to watch on a Friday night” thrillers. A weak, plodding script holds it back.

Having not read the novel, I won’t assign too much blame to the source material. Anyway, I gather that the screenplay makes substantial changes beyond moving the action from England to New Jersey. Possibly because this is a Netflix thriller, characters have been pared down to their basic components. Adam Scott breathes what life he can into his rote Sad Father role. He and the young Acston Luca Porto have believable chemistry and Scott’s acerbic line deliveries add shadings of frustration and self-loathing to otherwise generic scenes later in the film, but he can only do so much. Jacoby and Palmer’s script spends so little time developing Tom that his hereditary alcoholism and dead wife function more as conversation prompts than anything else.

Robert DeNiro has been accused of phoning it in from time to time. He’s given so little to sink his teeth into here I’m not sure how you could tell or if you could really blame him if he did. Monaghan is given the least to do out of the main cast; she’s a good actress, but her cop role could have been played by almost anyone (this is true of most cop roles, to be fair). Michael Keaton seems to enjoy himself in spite of the clunky “taunting the cop from prison” dialogue he’s stuck handling.

The mystery side of this serial killer thriller isn’t much better than the character side. This kind of movie can get away with having a predictable plot or shallow characters, but not both. The Whisper Man, as a film and as a cinematic killer, is a pale imitation of more dynamic predecessors. In a way that’s fitting for a movie about a copycat murderer. In another, less generous way, it makes this the kind of film that leaves your mind before the credits have finished.

To his credit, director James Ashcroft brings a solid craft to the proceedings that keeps the The Whisper Man from being an outright bad movie. He manages to give the film a gloomy visual palate without succumbing to Netflix’s ubiquitous gray sludge. Interior scenes have decent depth and lighting. Creepy sequences build effectively, especially when there’s little dialogue to drag them down. With the right screenplay, I could see Ashcroft joining the ranks of Hollywood’s workman directors like Renny Harlin (Deep Blue Sea, Die Hard 2), Martin Campbell (The Mask of Zorro, Casino Royale), or Jaume Collet-Serra (The Shallows, Jungle Cruise).

If you’re looking for an entertaining way to pass a Friday night, I suppose you could do worse than The Whisper Man. You could do a lot better, though.