The 90’s serial killer thriller is back, baby | The Whisper Man (2026)
If you leave a door half open, soon you’ll hear the whispers spoken.
I am Jason Kleeberg, this is Force Five, and today I’m going to give you 5 reasons you might like the 2026 film The Whisper Man.
If you miss 90’s mid-budget serial killer thrillers, this film will scratch that itch. In the 90’s these kinds of movies were everywhere. A detective trying to hunt down a mysterious killer, newspaper clippings in a dimly lit room, Morgan Freeman was probably hanging around, and now you don’t get many of those. The Whisper Man stars Adam Scott as Tom Kennedy, a recently widowed father who moves back to the town he grew up in with his young son Jake hoping for a fresh start. Unfortunately, this town comes with baggage. See, years earlier, a serial killer known as The Whisper Man abducted and murdered several children, and while he was eventually caught and remains behind bars in prison, a few more children have just gone missing…and now Jake has started hearing the whispers. If you like movies like Kiss the Girls, Copycat, The Bone Collector, even Along Came a Spider if we’re stretching into the early 2000’s, this has all of the hallmarks those films do, and I genuinely miss these kinds of movies.
Adam Scott is having a great dramatic renaissance with Severance and Hokum and if you’re a fan of his work, he’s great in this. He’s spent so many years being funny in things like Parks & Rec, Party Down, and Boy Meets World…yes, he was in an episode of that, that sometimes it’s easy to forget that he’s really good when he gets serious. Tom is broken when the film begins - his wife has died and he’s trying to raise Jake on his own while dealing with the realization that he doesn’t really know how to connect with his kid, a kid who has his own issues going on. Adam Scott doesn’t play grief as someone crying in every scene, he just feels tired and you can see that he’s mentally elsewhere. And then when his kid disappears, suddenly that emotional distance becomes even more terrifying, confronting the possibility that he may lose the only family he has left.
In addition to Adam Scott, the rest of this cast is packed. Michelle Monaghan is always amazing and she gives the detective side of things some humanity instead of just existing to deliver exposition and to get us from one point to another. Robert De Niro brings exactly the kind of gravitas you need from an older, now retired detective who has been carrying this case around for years - he’s the man who put the Whisper Man behind bars back in the day. Hamish Linklater is in this and he’s just so unsettling as this rich guy who collects things from serial killers, and finally, in an Anthony Hopkins as Hannibal Lecter opportunity, Michael Keaton plays the original Whisper Man who may have an idea just what’s going on outside of his cell. He really understands how much fun can be had in playing someone who knows everyone in the room is afraid of him. It’s a very well cast film and everyone is doing their part.
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If you like crime thrillers that flirt with horror and the supernatural, you’ll like this movie. On paper, it’s a serial killer procedural but there are moments where it feels much closer to a supernatural horror movie. There’s a creepy rhyme that kids repeat, a killer who is somehow whispering to kids outside of their bedroom windows, an imaginary friend who may not be imaginary, a kid drawing things he shouldn’t even know about, and other cues as well. There’s a constant question of whether something supernatural is happening or whether everyone is just trying to make sense of something horrible. At times it reminded me of other films like The Black Phone, Prisoners for sure, maybe even a little Sinister or The Sixth Sense. Maybe there’s a ghost, maybe there isn’t…
If you like complicated stories about generational trauma, specifically between fathers and sons, you’ll find more weight here than a standard serial killer thriller. There are three generations of fathers and sons running through this story. There’s Tom, who is struggling to connect with Jake, but Tom also has a very fractured relationship with his own father who has never even met Jake. Once Jake goes missing, he has to turn toward a man he has spent decades trying to avoid. So underneath all of the serial killer stuff, the movie is really about fathers passing damage down to their sons. This is based on a book by Alex North who has described his material as the mechanism that makes the underlying family drama more exciting. The question is deeper than, “Who took Jake and can we save him?”, it’s also, “Can Tom stop repeating the same emotional patterns that have been passed from one generation to the next.” If you like films like Frequency, Road to Perdition, A River Runs Through It or even Field of Dreams, there’s an emotional hook here that I wasn’t completely expecting.
If you miss mid-budget serial killer procedurals, Adam Scott getting dramatic, stacked supporting casts, crime thrillers that mix with horror or puzzle box stories about fathers and sons, give this one a shot.
If you’ve seen The Whisper Man, what did you think of it? Let me know in the comments below. I’d also love to know iIf you have a movie you want me to do a 5 reasons video for. Finally, down below you’ll find the link to order merch and links to my other socials as well.
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