Back in the 1970s, even after my mother had gone back to work as a school librarian, she would read a novel a day. In my memory, it seemed like every week she would add to her collection of paperbacks. We made Friday evening pilgrimages to St. Petersburg’s legendary Haslam’s Book Store — yes, the one that has been sitting shuttered and untouched ever since 2020, its dusty aisles and stacks of tomes visited only by the ghost of Jack Kerouac. The owners have neither sold the property nor offered any inkling of a forthcoming revival. It seems increasingly unlikely this story will have a happy ending for those bibliophiles who were drawn to that place during its 90 years in business.
What kinds of books did my mother enjoy? Domestic dramas? Pop fiction? Gothic novels? Harlequin Romance?
No … she liked murder mysteries and true crime books. She held on to her favorites, collecting them in a small hutch in the living room. I remember flipping through the pages of Truman Capote’s “In Cold Blood” and Vincent Bugliosi’s “Helter Skelter” when I was still in elementary school. As I got older, I would find her sitting in her favorite chair with her nose buried in serial killer fiction: Thomas Harris, James Patterson, Patricia Cornwell, etc. I may have given her a copy of “Mindhunter” for Christmas in the 1990s.
If my mother was still alive, I suspect she would have a small collection of Alex North books sitting on a shelf in her closet. North is the pen name of Steve Mosby, a British crime writer. As North, his first novel was “The Whisper Man,” published in 2019. That book is the basis for a new film directed by James Ashcroft. “The Whisper Man” debuted on Aug. 28 on Netflix. While I cannot speak to the quality of the novel, Ashcroft’s adaptation is a grim, disappointing hodgepodge of tedius tropes and predictable outcomes. The film fuses elements of police procedural, crime dramas, and supernatural horror, but it tries too hard to evoke genre classics along the way. It imitates aspects of “Seven,” “Silence of the Lambs,” “Zodiac,” and other films.
In “The Whisper Man,” following the death of his wife, Tom Kennedy (Adam Scott), a crime writer, and his son Jake (Acston Luca Porto), move back to Tom’s hometown. They rent a ridiculously large gothic-looking mansion (with lots and lots of great big, impossible-to-cover windows that make stalking so much easier for prospective killers!). This is the kind of house William Castle could have populated with 113 ghosts. The haunted house motif is bolstered by an occasional glimpse of a young girl only Jake sees. Tom believes it is his imaginary friend.
The town happens to have been the location of a series of horrific child abductions and murders roughly two decades earlier. Tom’s estranged father, Pete (Robert De Niro), was the police detective who finally caught the original killer — though his obsession with solving the case and locating the final victim led to alcoholism and the end of his marriage.
If all that doesn’t seem ominous enough, it turns out that a child went missing just before Tom and Jake arrived. Detective Amanda Beck (Michelle Monaghan), investigating the case, is worried that it may be a copycat killer.
All of this makes the viewer exactly wonder why Tom wanted to “get a fresh start” in this town.
Even for those who did not read the synopsis or watch the trailer, it becomes abundantly clear that Jake will be the killer’s next victim. To Ashcroft’s credit, he carries out the kidnapping quickly. The subsequent series of scenes, involving the first responders plodding through Tom’s spooky manor like bumbling Keystone Cops, establishes one of the film’s most irksome clichés: the local law enforcement agency suffers from strategic stupidity. Whenever it suits the plot, they drop the ball.
This gimmick persists all the way through to the film’s climax, where Beck repeatedly makes absurd choices.
The cast really tries to make this movie work. De Niro’s character is a trainwreck. He’s a shadow of whatever man he was in his youth. He recognizes the long string of mistakes that left him a lonely old man. Every attempt he makes to reestablish a connection with Tom is destined to fail, because Tom is focused on doing whatever he can to find his son.
And then there’s Michael Keaton as Frank Carter. He gives an astounding and harrowing performance. It immediately reminded me of his portrayal of sociopathic tenant Carter Hayes in “Pacific Heights” — but even more unhinged, deviant and despicable. Monaghan did her best with what the script provided, but there simply wasn’t enough on the page to make that character come to life. Beck felt like a placeholder for any lead investigator working an impossibly stressful case, a one-dimensional stereotype that barely had an impact on the story’s resolution. The lack of backstory here is so significant that the viewer becomes emotionally detached.
“The Whisper Man” is more style than substance. It’s too predictable and too reminiscent of previous standouts in this genre. When Ashcroft leans into the supernatural and horror aspects of the story, those moments offer a brief and fascinating diversion, but there isn’t enough there make up for the film’s many shortcomings.
Still, I wouldn’t want to meet Frank Carter face to face, even if he was behind bars and handcuffed to a table. That’s what many viewers will take from “The Whisper Man” — Keaton can still deliver a level of charismatic malevolence on screen that is terrifying.
Now, go buy the New York Times bestselling novel by Alex North. I’ll bet there’s one sitting on the shelf at Haslam’s right now, if only they would reopen their doors. Do it for Kerouac’s ghost. I bet he’s lonely.
Lee Clark Zumpe is entertainment editor at Tampa Bay Newspapers, a Tomatometer-Approved Critic, and an author of short fiction. He can be reached by email at lzumpe@TBNweekly.com.