u/PapaAsmodeus

Ngl, I completely forgot I saw this movie until I saw a reel about it on Instagram that pointed out a plot hole involving stairs.

The Whisper Man is a movie I checked out purely because of the title. The title is one of the most unintentionally things I have ever heard, so I googled it and immediately one of the first things I found out was that it's based on a novel from 2019 that doesn't even have a Wikipedia page. Hmm, I wonder why.

Basically Adam Scott plays a failing writer (interesting that he's done that twice this year) and his child has an imaginary friend and apparently this dad has never seen The Sixth Sense or any other movie involving children which overly active imaginations (or probably just doesn't know how children's minds work) and thinks its a huge problem. And then said child goes missing in the middle of the night and his father (played by Robert De Niro, in some of the most random casting I have seen this year) is brought into investigate because the kidnapping resembles a previous string of child murders done by a "Whisper Man" from 30 years ago (played by Michael Keaton- told you this movie's casting was extremely random). He's called that because he makes cassette tapes of him creepily whispering into tape recorders while talking to the children.

The biggest issue here is that it's just an extremely boring story with no likeable characters. It's the kind of movie that has already been done a million times before- if you have seen Prisoners, or any other movie involving missing children, you guaranteed have already seen it. It somehow manages to be a movie where absolutely nothing happens but also it's all over the place at the same time. There's like 5 different subplots fighting for the light. There's a weird attempt at an imaginary friend supernatural subplot that gets introduced like 10 minutes into the movie and then gets forgotten until near the end, among others. There's a weird drug dealer subplots that goes nowhere. It's honestly the most unspecial nonsense you'll find on Netflix and what I truly found eye opening upon watching the first few and credits is that it's produced by the Russo Brothers for some reason?

The final 30 minutes admittedly do get interesting purely because it goes off the rails super quickly, but it's not worth sitting through to get to it.

I know Adum is going to see the movie eventually because it's from the same team as Too Many Cooks, but yes, Buddy really is that good. It's basically Interdimensional Cable meets The Ring meets Quiet on Set meets Kevin Can Fuck Himself meets Backrooms. Crazy combination I know, but it really works.

It definitely is the "evil Barney the Dinosaur movie" everyone is saying it is, but it's also a lot more. What I found interesting was that there were a ton of things that probably should have been problems for me on other movies, but here I actually didn't mind them? Like there's overly fake looking CG flames, and in a movie that took itself more seriously that WOULD be a problem, but I was able to overlook it. The child acting wasn't PARTICULARLY great but considering a good chunk of the movie actually takes place inside the world of the show, I didn't mind it. The script didnt really demand a lot from the child actors to begin with so I was more than fine with it.

I guess my one issue is that I do like >!the idea that the Buddy show is a glorified sci-fi human trafficking/SCP Foundation type thing where he can appear into select households via some sort of Candle Cove magic, but I feel like that was kinda underdeveloped. I feel like if they were going to introduce that then they should have spent an extra few minutes explaining how the other kids ended up there. Its a great formula and maybe if we get a trilogy about the other two Buddies then we will!<, but yeah, I just thought that felt a tad rushed.

Otherwise, 8/10. Laughed my ass off, cringed in other parts, and had a jolly old time at the theater.