Review: Whisper


Ne’er-do-well Josh Holloway (TV’s “Lost”) and fiancé Sarah Wayne Callies (TV’s “Prison Break” and “The Walking Dead”) dream of putting a shady past behind them, buying a rundown diner and living happily ever after. But when their dreams look like never happening, Holloway rather stupidly falls in with unscrupulous crony Michael Rooker’s scheme to kidnap a rich kid for a healthy ransom, with Callies tagging along ‘coz...well, motherly instincts and all that might come in handy. Unfortunately this kid ain’t one to be fucked with, he’s a full-on demonic little shit who proceeds to manipulate the minds of his would-be kidnappers (including Joel Edgerton), picking them off one-by-one. Dulé Hill plays a standard issue cop on the trail.

 

2007 Stewart Hendler flick (shot in 2005) starts out like “Ransom” but featuring Holloway’s “Lost” character instead of Donnie Wahlberg and our own Edgerton instead of Liev Schreiber, then it turns into a mixture of “The Omen” (cue the demonic child, and the suspenseful scene literally involving thin ice, etc.) and “The Bad Seed”. Add to that the fact that cinematographer Dean Cundey (The John Carpenter flicks “Halloween” and “The Thing”) is back shooting wintry scenery for all the menace it is worth, and you’ve got an eclectic and unoriginal film. This would all be fine except for the fact that the “Ransom” stuff is so much more interesting than the tepid horror stuff (never explaining the nature of the boy is terribly frustrating for the viewer), especially when the always gruff Rooker is allowed to do his thing in the early going. I thought it was going somewhere interesting with the kidnap stuff, but when I finally realised where it was going...I felt like rewinding it to moderately enjoy the first half again.

 

Holloway is fine in the lead, but his wannabe-reformed con character is only a whisker away from Sawyer on “Lost”. The cast (including a horribly wasted Hill- Were Blu Mankuma, Ice-T, Richard Roundtree, and Carl Weathers all busy?) deserved much better than this derivative, clunky script by Christopher Borrelli. It’s much ado about next to nothing you haven’t seen plenty of times before.

 

Rating: C

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