Tragedy. Fathers desperate for connection with their sons and failing to find it. A string of murders that left a town shaken and an eerie nursery rhyme in their wake. Minds, homes, and families haunted. A cop desperate to stop the murder of a small boy before it happens. The Whisper Man has all the ingredients of a story that will chill your bones.

Based on the novel by Alex North, the film follows newly widowed crime novelist Tom Kennedy (Adam Scott), who is forced to reconcile with estranged father and retired detective Pete Willis (Robert De Niro) when his son Jake (Acston Luca Porto) goes missing. The kidnapping follows the pattern of a child abduction and murder spree that Willis solved when Tom was just a boy; the circumstances of Willis’ involvement with the crime and its perpetrator left the detective so traumatized that he ultimately abandoned his family.

The only person who might know who is behind these grisly acts — a butcher of innocents known as the Whisper Man — sits rotting in the jail cell where Willis put him. Desperate to find Jake and assigned to the case, Detective Amanda Beck (Michelle Monaghan) joins forces with Willis in a partnership that’s one of several contrivances meant to move the plot along. Unfortunately, that team doesn’t always track, and the circumstances surrounding the home that Tom rents are so full of wild coincidences that one is left utterly baffled.

The Whisper Man draws on a hodgepodge of influences, tropes, and plotlines from past thrillers, some more successful than others.

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