Video summary
The reviewer opens by positioning *The Whisper Man* as another entry in Netflix's catalog of mediocre to outright terrible streaming content, joining films like *The Last House*. Despite a cast that includes Michelle Monahan, Robert Dario, Adam Scott, and Michael Keaton, the film is criticized for being uninteresting and often boring. The reviewer notes that while most Netflix movies are poor, this one falls on a specific scale of "suckness," comparing it unfavorably to actual thrillers like *Ransom* or *The Silence of the Lambs*. While acknowledging that Michael Keaton delivers a cheesy but entertaining performance as the villainous Frank Carter, the reviewer argues that his presence is the only redeeming quality in an otherwise forgettable movie where characters lack excitement and depth.
The plot follows single father Tom Kennedy, played by Adam Scott, who moves into a dilapidated house with his grieving son, Jake, only to be haunted by whispers and a mysterious stranger who physically reaches through the mail slot. The reviewer highlights significant logical flaws in the screenplay, particularly a massive plot hole involving a squatter who pushes Tom out of the basement without facing consequences, allowing him to escape while police fail to investigate the area thoroughly. This incompetence sets the stage for the son's eventual kidnapping by the "Whisper Man," a serial killer known for whispering sweet nothings to victims before killing them. The narrative relies heavily on these structural weaknesses rather than building genuine tension or suspense.
Production values are described as inconsistent, shifting between high-polish scenes and comically bad footage that appears to be from a low-budget C-team or poorly executed reshoots. Specific examples include an intro scene with excellent lighting followed by a car sequence shot with a cheap drone in poor resolution. The reviewer also criticizes the film's emotional payoff, noting that the climax lacks a powerful reunion moment typical of the genre. Instead, the father is stabbed and dies while his son looks on without receiving a proper goodbye, a failure the reviewer finds particularly egregious given the stakes involved. Ultimately, the movie is deemed a waste of time that emulates other thrillers without delivering any interesting payoff or memorable moments.
Read the full video transcript
A week or so back, Netflix confirmed
once and for all that they are the king
of all kings when it comes to producing
straight to streaming garbage with The
Last House. But regardless of a lot of
negative feedback, products must keep
producting. So we have another thriller,
baby. This one's called The Whisper Man.
The The Whisper Man. I didn't really
make that very clear. It stars Michelle
Monahan, Robert Dairo, and Adam Scott,
who seems to be in his horror era. First
he had that little slice of a cameo in
the monkey, then he was in Hokum, and
here he is now with the whisper man.
Feel like I'm forgetting someone pretty
prominent. Oh yeah, Michael Keadon's
also in this movie. So with a
star-studded cast, a check notes,
Rating, what thought for sure this was
PG-13, but whatever. and a 2-hour run
time. You better believe The Whisper Man
keeps Netflix's legacy alive as mediocre
to downright awful garbage products. Put
on the streaming service to keep us
watching week to week. Let's talk about
it in a I'll probably get into spoilers
later, but I'll try to let you know.
Let's begin.
If you find yourself enjoying the
commentary, feel free to sub to this
show. Adam does movies. I'm Adam. I I do
the movies. So, obviously The Whisper
Man sucks. Most these Netflix movies
suck, but it's it's like on a scale.
It's a degree to how much suckness there
is. That's really what we have to
determine today. But, as an aside, I
just want to give a shout out to an
actual good film in the thriller space
about a father who loses a son to a
kidnapper. It's called Ransom. It stars
Mel Gibson, completely unhinged.
So, just Mel Gibson. It's a fun roller
coaster ride. There's twists, there's
turns, there's there's some stakes,
there's some good emotional beats. It's
about a father who puts up a million
dollar bounty on the bastards who took
his child in the hopes that people will
go on an allout manhunt in a vigilante
justice sort of way to bring his son
back to HIM SAFELY. GIVE ME BACK MY SON.
THE WHISPER MAN ALSO has shades of
Silence of the Lambs, but I mean that's
almost a disservice to even put them in
the same sentence together. Silence of
the Lambs is a phenomenal film. Watch
that over this if you haven't seen it.
And I'll get to why I'm even making the
comparison. It has to do with Michael
Keaton's character.
I mean, it's entirely because of that.
They go to ask him for, you know, advice
because he's in jail. Anyway, let's get
to the story. All right. What we have
here is a father and a son who looks
nothing like the dad or the mom when
they show photos of her. Really love.
Shout out to the casting department in a
lot of modern movies where they just
can't find kids that even look remotely
like the parent. The same thing happened
in Buddy recently. That horror film.
Buddy, by the way, far better than the
whisper man. Far more creative. It's
it's a fun time. But anyway, back to
this. Adam Scott plays a single father
of one named Tom Kennedy who's a author
which is a refreshing change of pace
from his last role in Hokum where he was
a author. They moved across the city to
a shitty fixer upper with the floor
leaking water up in the attic. It seemed
like a bad investment. I don't know if
he inherited the house or what happened
and why he settled on this dwelling. To
be fair, I was in and out of
consciousness during this flick because
it's pretty uninteresting and oftentimes
boring. Anyway, he has a kid who's very
much grieving the loss of his mother
still. Uh, yeah, the the mom's out of
the picture. She died off camera, but
the kid keeps little keepsakes of her
and, you know, he just has like little
reminders of of the great woman she was.
Anything else particularly special about
this boy, Jake? Uh, oh yeah, he talks to
an imaginary friend. They barely have a
chance to settle into this creepy place
before something eerie happens. A
stranger is whispering outside Jake's
window and he even sticks his hand
through the little mail slot at the
front door. Unlike the frustrating trope
we often get where the kid sees
something bad happen and the parent
doesn't, so he doesn't believe them. Not
in this instance. Adam Scott's character
Tom actually sees the hand go through
the mail slot. He freaks out. He busts
through the front door looking for this
piece of [ __ ] Doesn't find him. And so
naturally, he's on high alert and tells
his son to go back in HIS ROOM TO BED.
WHAT? IT WAS AT THIS POINT, 15, 20
minutes into the movie where I thought,
"Oh, [ __ ] This is going to get bad,
isn't it?" What sane individual, let
alone a father, would have their kid go
back to their bedroom where they had
said they were getting whispers outside
the window and then they saw an actual
physical human glove from a person in
the mailbox of the front slot of the
door IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT. While
this is going on, there is a manhunt out
there for a serial killer who's been
going around whispering sweet nothings
into boys ears before inevitably killing
them. He's known as the whisper man, but
that's a little odd because the whisper
man's already behind bars. Robert
Dairo's character made sure of it years
ago. Robert Dairo's character Peter has
been retired and off cases for many,
many years now, if that makes sense.
Dairo is 83 years young. That's sad to
say out loud because the guy's given us
so many amazing movies over the years.
Casino, The Godfather, Part Two, The
Criminally Underrated, The Score with
Edward Norton. Now we're seeing him much
older, more frail. He doesn't have a lot
of speaking lines in the movie. It It's
just sad. Anyway, back I'm getting
sidetracked because that's more
interesting to me than anything that's
happening in this film. We're moving
into spoiler territory. Uh even though
the trailer probably shows all this. I
didn't see a trailer going in. I went in
fresh as a Daisy. But what's going to
end up happening here is Thomas's son,
Jake, who, you know, heard the noises
whispering outside his window and then
the the person came to the front door.
He's going to get kidnapped
by that person. Shocking. Now, what
makes The Whisper Man super interesting
compared to a lot of like decent drama
thrillers is it's entirely reliant on a
massive huge enormous gigantuous gaping
plot hole slash I guess chalk up to
incompetence in this film because after
30 minutes or so, Tom is going to be
hanging out in the basement of this [ __ ]
hole house. he's in and a squatter is
going to come out of nowhere, shove him,
and then run out of the house. At which
point, Tom, who is very taken OFF GUARD.
THE [ __ ] HE STARTS CHASING HIM, trips
over his own patheticness, ah,
and allows the criminal to get away.
Here's where the truly spectacular
incompetence comes into play and what
really renders the rest of this movie
[ __ ] pointless and stupid. The cops
show up. They take a look around the
basement. They say there's no reason to
press charges or anything they can do
because, you know, he was squatting
there. He he he didn't really assault
you. He just pushed you out of the way.
He's probably gone for good. There's
really no reason to look into this any
further. They they go to the back area
where this squatter was at behind a
shelf that they had to move.
There's a whole bench of bricks laid out
in a very peculiar fashion, but they're
going to take absolutely zero time to
even look around in the room. They're
just going to close it back off. Keep in
mind, one day later from now, Tom's son
is going to get kidnapped. And so, any
detective worth their salt, no, let me
scratch that. Any detective at all? No,
scratch that. Any person that's not a
complete [ __ ] [ __ ] would know to
look around in that basement cellar.
Check out every inch of this place where
the squatter was at. Because when
someone goes missing, you look to the
parents. You look to the relatives. You
look to acquaintances. You look to
enemies. You look to people that were in
your house the night BEFORE SLEEPING IN
YOUR BASEMENT. THE NEXT hour is going to
be a bunch of [ __ ] footing around, a
bunch of Mickey Mouse [ __ ] as our
characters question people, look around
at different potential suspects before
ultimately swinging back around to the
basement of the house the [ __ ] is
living in. And oh, what do you know?
The brick bench that was in that back
cellar easily comes up and there's a
trap door with some bones inside of one
of the kids that was taken years
earlier. was the squatter all along. But
in order to get to this point, we have
to have a mending of relationships. We
have to have Tom go to his papa Peter,
tears in his eyes, as people often
approach me and say, "Sir, please get
back on the case and find MY SON. GIVE
ME BACK MY SON." ROBERT DAIRO'S PETER, a
man of very few words, drinks his
coffee.
Yeah, I don't really do that anymore,
bruh. Uh, maybe figure it out yourself,
bruh. Michelle Monahan's character,
Amanda, is also on the beat. I mean,
she's the actual lead in this
investigation, but she's going to have
to work handinand with Dairo, who
inevitably will get back onto this. He's
going to use his inside intel, which
means they have to go talk to the
mastermind behind all of this, Michael
Keaton's character, Frank Carter. And I
have to tell you, Katon is eating up
every single inch of scenery in this
film. He's having a great time, as he
always does, giving us a very cheesy,
schlocky performance. But it's fine.
It's the only interesting thing worth
listening to in this crappy film.
Production-wise, this movie is a little
all over the place. Sometimes it's very
high polished. Looks like an actual
movie. And at other points, it looks
like they use footage from the C team or
they had to do a bunch of re-shoots
because the last 20 minutes is horribly
shot, very poorly lit. It It's comically
bad. And in fact, even the intro scene
to this movie, very polished, very, you
know, very nice production values. But
then we jump cut to the first time we
meet Adam Scott and his son. They're in
a car driving down the highway and it's
this really poor resolution drone shot
they clearly used. They must have needed
an establishing shot, but the cameras
weren't working. So, they went across
the street to little Jimmy's house, and
they paid him a whole $10 so they can
use his crappy ass drone with the 720p
GoPro strapped to the front to fly over
the highway. This movie sucks. There's
not a memorable moment to be found. The
the characters aren't exciting enough to
really pay attention to for the most
part. My wife fell asleep 45 minutes
into the movie, which is always a nice
bedrock to a good flick. I don't know if
I'm using that word right, bedrock, but
it doesn't matter. The thriller genre is
one of my favorites. So to see a movie
like this that's just kind of like doing
the bare minimum. It it's emulating a
lot of other films without any of the
interesting payoff. It's just a waste of
a little less than two hours of your
time. The four main actors I talked
about are fantastic in their own right,
but in this movie they just don't have
anything to do or they're Michael
Keaton. They're just having a great time
for a couple afternoons of filming.
Again, I mentioned it's rated R. I'm not
entirely sure why. I guess for swearing
and and maybe just some of the adult
content, like, you know, just the fact
that there's kids being uh killed off
camera and you see some of the the
bodies. There's really nothing here,
though, that that's shock and awe. And
the stupidity on display from every
character in this is hands down even
more impressive than maybe The Last
House. The fact that Michelle's
character, Amanda, tracks down the
killer, has him cornered, doesn't call
for backup until way too late. He grabs
the kid and flees the scene. And then he
decides in his infinite
WISDOM TO GO BACK to the house where
Adam Scott lives into the basement and
put the kid down there again. What? He
could have gone. He could have gone to
Mexico. He could have gone anywhere. He
could have gone just a couple towns
over. No one knows how to find the guy
now that he left the house. And a movie
where a kid is kidnapped and the parent
has to go on a manh hunt to find them
usually ends with a powerful moment
where they have reunited and it feels so
good. But this does not feel good.
There's no real powerful moment like
that because it takes place during this
crappily lit scene where the dad's there
too and he gets stabbed and so he's
bleeding out. But Adam Scott's character
doesn't even really give a [ __ ] to say
anything to him. The dad's dying. He's
like, "I love you, son." Tom looks over
at his father's like
Mhm. Come on, son. You couldn't have
given the man an I love you, too. [ __ ]
you, Tom. And [ __ ] this movie. And
that's The Whisper Man. It's another
Netflix product. And this will sadly be
the final film I see in August of 2026.
So coming up, I will have a ranking
video which is also acting as a
collection of those reviews, probably a
dozen films, and it'll I'm sure it'll
span an hour's worth of time. If you
like listening to longer form content, I
have that coming up. Plus, I do tons of
movie reviews, live streams once a week,
reactions to different film topics.
There's a lot of stuff here. I would
absolutely appreciate if you sub to the
show. Adam does movies. It's free of
charge. Doesn't cost you a dime. And
hopefully I see you for the next video.
And sadly, The Whisper Man will not be
ranked last on that video. All right,
take care.
Thanks again for watching the video. If
you didn't know, I'm a oneman operation
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