Review by BigBadWolfBoy
I don’t think I’ll ever tire of ‘Evil Kid’ movies. From The Omen to The Bad Seed to The Village of the Damned, I just love watching knee-high Hellspawn frighten the ever-lovin’ crap out of folks using techniques such as the "Stand Quietly In the Corner…Staring" gambit, and the "Speak Softly and Use Verbiage Way Beyond the Grasp of a Normal 8-Year Old" trick. They like to smirk, too, when adults aren’t looking. Talented smirkers, it seems, are the Children of Darkness.
In Whisper, the 2007 Direct-to-Video release from Gold Circle Films, a young, creepy, possibly demonic half-pint named David uses the above tactics and much, much more to juju the hell out of a pack of unsuspecting kidnappers who attempt to hold him for ransom in a secluded cabin.
A big part of producing a successful ‘Evil Kid’ movie is finding a competent Devil Child. In the case of Whisper, director Stewart Hendler did a bang up job- young Blake Woodruff nails the role of David. Also along for the ride (as the band of nefarious kidnappers) are Josh Holloway, Joel Edgerton, Sarah Wayne Callies, and Michael Effin’ Rooker.
The movie wastes little time with set-up; David is safely within the clutches of his kidnappers…or are his kidnappers safely within David’s clutches? I don’t know, somebody is safely within somebody else’s clutches within the first ten minutes. This is a good thing, because the juicy meat of the movie is the interplay between the manipulative little bastard and his hosts.
I knew I was going to like this movie about twenty minutes in, when Michael Rooker decides to give the kid a threatening speech in an attempt to keep him in check. Now Michael Rooker is a scary guy. I mean, I sure as hell wouldn’t want to get on Michael Rooker’s bad side. But the kid sits there, listens to the speech, and then proceeds to hand Michael Rooker his scary, Portrait-of-a-Serial-Killing ASS with a speech of his own. It’s an amazing moment, because with it Hendler shows that David isn’t going to simply stand around looking creepy for the entire movie. Instead, he’s going to toy with his captors, and he’s going to do it with gusto. He exploits the weaknesses of his kidnappers; turning them against each other. This is where the smirking comes in.
Elsewhere, Hendler provides some decent jump scares, mainly tied to disturbing dreams which plague the kidnappers, and which may quite possibly be induced by our dapper hellion and the whisper of the title.
Though I am definitely not a fan of Lost star Josh Holloway (he always looks to me like he should be singing Contemporary Christian music), he does fine as Max, the good/bad guy who’s only in on the snatch because he needs money to open his dream restaurant.
I only have a few complaints. First off, I would have preferred to wonder for quite a while longer whether the boy was, in fact, supernatural or just really good at manipulating people. Also, since there is quite a bit of smarts evident in the script by Christopher Borrelli, there are a few cliched scenes I wish would have been re-written (If I’m ever the main character in a movie and someone pulls a gun on me and starts babbling about how they have "no other choice…all hope is lost…blah blah blah" I will have no fear. If you’ve had to sit through that same scene as many times as I have, then you know why.) And I was disappointed that when it came time to end the movie the filmmakers apparently shrugged and said, "Uh…how about luck?" Sorry, but no. No. Hell no.
In the end Whisper is an intelligent, darkly humorous treat featuring a good, creepy performance by Blake Woodruff, and an ending that unfortunately doesn’t hold up to the rest.
It’s set to release on DVD November 27, 2007.
