Blow The Whistle, Baby! Here We Go!: Whistle (2025)

Whistle (2025)

Rating: *1/2

Starring: Dafne Keen, Sophie Nélisse, Sky Yang

This should have been the kind of movie that'll win me over; a supernatural slasher revolving around the Ehecachichtli, also known as the Aztec death whistle, an instrument formerly used by the Mexica people to scare off foes as the noise it makes resemble either wind or, most macabre, a high-pitched scream. Have that badassery incorporated into an otherworldly massacre done in your classic teen-kill plot and this title could have been an interesting bodycounter. But regrettably, Whistle (2025) hardly bothered with what it presents.

At a Pellington high school basketball game, star player Mason is terrifyingly distracted by visions of a charred figure slowly approaching him. Despite this, he wins the match and, immediately afterwards, seemingly ends whatever haunting that's going on by destroying an artifact from his locker: the Aztec death whistle. This, unfortunately for the kid, didn't stop the charred man from finally catching up to him, burning Mason alive in the school showers as everybody else occupying it watch in horror. 

Six months later, recovering drug addict Chrys leaves Chicago to attend Pellington following her father's death, hoping for a fresh start to her life post-rehab. She's living in with her cousin Rel, who also happens to be a student there, and the two gets into a lick of trouble when Dean, one of the jocks, learns that Chrys is now using Mason's locker, a matter that he deems disrespectful to his late friend. The altercation escalates to the basketball player getting his balls kneed, a fight that Dean's girlfriend Grace and a do-gooder bystander Ellie tried stopping. However, a schoolteacher (played by Shaun of the Dead (2004)'s Nick Frost in what's basically a glorified cameo) witness the fight and issues all five teens to detention.

Things further go from frustrating to strange as, inside her locker, Chrys finds the Aztec death whistle, whole once more. Thinking it belongs to Mason, she brings it along to detention after school, where the schoolteacher decides to hold on to it as school property. Sellable school property. It ain't long, though, before this fella gets his comeuppance as, after ending detention early to get rid of the kids, he blows into the whistle to see if the antique still works, unknowingly summoning a gaunt balding figure that proceeds to murder him through what appears to be an accelerated sickness. 

Having forgotten a comic book, Rel returns to the classroom and spots the whistle all on its own. He pockets it because, well, it's cool, and he brings the damn thing along to a group meeting/party at Grace's house where they're supposed to be working on an assignment. As you expect, the skully trinket gets blown into again, its noise now heard by Chrys, Rel, Dean, Grace and Ellie. 

Eerily mangled, aging and/or slaughtered visages of themselves begin to terrorize the main casts then, a ghoulish predicament that Chrys and Ellie readily accept as the doing of the cursed whistle after some slight research, and a quick visit to Mason's home where his Grandmother Ivy lore dumps what the thing does; as it turns out, hearing the whistle's cry causes one's future death to arrive sooner in the form of a shambling doppelganger, which is frankly the movie's strongest element. 

We see a good array of these deathly doubles ranging from brittle seniors running amuck, to horrifying flesh sacks loosely held together by broken bones, all of them stalking and chasing their victims one by one. A good deal of make-up and CG work were done for their scenes, leading to gruesomely creative deaths that earn this movie it's R-rating with all the blood and gore in display. Sadly, these are the only positives I can see from Whistle (2025) as everything else is your run-in-the-mill cursed object spiel done in the barest of bones and borrowed points.

Basically, the writing is cheap with expositions and one-note characterizations, following a simple paint-by-number direction of kids fucking around and finding out, then trying to survive and mostly failing. Cliches upon cliches are tiresomely ever present as, of course, the one person who knows what's going on fails to explain how to stop it the first time they're asked, only to hint it later when all that's left are two and a half of the casts. But even then, Whistle (2025) fails to be impressive with its surprises since the way to stop this curse is ripped off from Final Destination 2 (2003), Final Destination 5 (2011) and The Evil Dead (2013), just done more complicatedly and dramatically. Wouldn't you know it, too, the film just has to end with a mid-credit scene that suggests a potential sequel. Yeah, sure. Smile 2 (2024) you are not, movie. 

Underwhelming. Just underwhelming. Whistle (2025) may have delivered the gory goods, but the painfully generic story drags everything else down to a forgettable slop. 

Bodycount:

1 male set ablaze

1 male suffers through an accelerated cancer

1 female aged to death

1 female passed away from cancer

1 male mangled

1 male minced and shredded into pieces

1 male gets a gunshot wound, suffers from a water death

Total: 7

Slithering & Slaughtering: Kiss of The Serpent (1988)

Kiss of The Serpent (1988) (AKA 'Snake Island')

Rating: **1/2

Starring: Chris Moore, Murray McDougall, Jeff Greenman

The scene starts at 1979, with a father attending a snake cult ceremony and begging its members to release his son from a curse. This fellow is herpetologist Dr Waylan, who runs a local Serpentarium and is guilty of stealing the cult's sacred white snake for an experiment involving venom, creating some sort of miracle cure. The cult, however, claims that it is too late to release his boy, Michael, from their snake god's wrath even if he returns the serpent to them, so Waylan has another member of this cult, a Native American friend, promising to take care of his son should anything happen to him.

And, wouldn't you know it, one 4th of July night, a gaggle of loud and horny teenagers choose to celebrate the holiday by taunting Michael with fireworks, lighting them outside the Serpentarium where the boy's entire family resides. This gravely escalates into an accidental arson, killing Dr. Waylan, his wife and his daughter. Michael, strangely, is nowhere to be found...

Moving ahead eight years later, the same teenagers are now in their twenties and are, unsurprisingly, just as loud. And horny. They're celebrating 4th of July by taking a yacht out to open waters, unbeknownst to them that someone has sabotaged the ride, making sure it crashes near a small, isolated isle known as 'Snake Island' which is populated mostly by, what else, snakes. Upon arriving there, our sultry subjects opt to make the best of their predicament, as being marooned does little to sway them off sex and booze, unaware that whoever plotted their unconventional stay has set their fangs on killing them off one by one to appease a serpent god and finally rid them of a curse. 

As a slasher fan, nothing catches my interest faster than the word 'obscure' and, time to time, I do end up enjoying the obscurities I get to see. Yes, there were some duds (looking at you The Intruder (1975) and Shaman (1988)), but hunting down rare slashers did lead me to seeing some rough hidden gems like Bloodstream (1985), Arboy Day (1990), The Stoneman (2002) and even the original cut of A Night of Dismember (1983)! 

That said, Kiss of The Serpent (1988) (AKA 'Snake Island') may as well join my collection cheesy guilty finds; it's nowhere near being a good movie with its distractingly choppy editing and muffled audio mixing. Not to mention the inconstant acting chops and line delivery from our casts, working on a script that walks a fine line between sleazy and unintentional satire. But what it lacks in quality production, the movie makes up for it with its creativity and ambition to be a little more than your average hack 'n slasher, even if said execution can be laughable for how on-the-nose and hammy it can be.

Given how many cult-themes slashers are out there, Children of the Corn (1984) and Blood Cult (1985) just to set examples, the supernatural angle of Kiss of The Serpent (1988) would have been nothing too special, if it wasn't for the killer being dedicatedly on brand with their cult's snake themes when it comes to their murders. Stabbing and slashing a victim? They'll do it with what looks like a hand-puppet snake head with twin metal blades for fangs! Need to shoot someone dead? Our murderer happens to have arrows tipped with open-mouthed, decapitated snake heads that they can shoot with a crossbow! And the sheer ridiculousness doesn't stop there as, while the majority of the plot follows your typical revenge-against-the-guilty jig, the last act of the movie shifts into creature feature territory as our slasher, finally succumbing to the curse, slowly transforms into a giant snake to attack one last victim. It's unhinged, yes, and I wouldn't have it any other way, though I do wish the kills could have been gorier, if not bloodier at least.

From what I can gather, Kiss of The Serpent (1988) never had a North American release and, instead, went straight to VHS internationally, contributing greatly to its rare status which is either a shame or a relief depending on how well you can swallow bad slashers. Still, I enjoyed its craziness enough to give it a pass, and if you don't demand much from your low-grade slashers and love a good enough rarity, then this is a title worth looking into.

Bodycount:

1 male seen killed in a fire

1 female and 1 girl mentioned killed in a fire

1 female garroted with a thin wire

1 male had his throat stabbed with a bladed snake glove

1 female stabbed to death with a bladed snake glove

1 female pulled underwater, decapitated

1 male repeatedly shot with a snake-headed arrows

1 female buried up to her neck, head set on fire

1 male bitten to death by snakes

1 male locked inside a room with a python, later seen dead with a throat wound

1 female slashed across the face with a bladed snake glove

1 male had his head blown off with a shotgun

Total: 13

The Devil's Father's Brother's Nephew's Cousin's Former Roommate: Bloodspell (1989)

Bloodspell (AKA 'The Boy From Hell', 'To The Devil a Son') (1989)
Rating: **
Starring: Aarin Teich, Anthony Jenkins, Twink Caplan

Ever wondered what The Omen (1976) would have been like if, instead of the baby Antichrist being taken in by a wealthy couple with ties to the government, spreading his influence across the world under the unholy ploy of the Devil himself, we have a teenager being dropped off at a care home for troubled kids by his frightened mother because his estranged Satanist father is looking to awaken his son's inner-devil and have him create the Anti-Christ with the girl of his choice by the time he turns eighteen?

If you answered 'yes', you're a weird lil' fella. And this is the movie you're looking for.

 

During his stay at St. Boniface Evaluation Center for Troubled Kids (where said 'kids' are played by actors pushing somewhere between late-20s to early-30s, acting like pre-schoolers), aforementioned bringer of darkness Daniel (Anthony Jenkins) is starting to show a lot of supernatural evil like causing windows to shatter to cut someone's face, making a remote explode at a kid's hand after they hog a TV, and murdering a pair of nasty bullies through grisly accidents. He's also been talking to the demonic apparition of his father who, after finally catching up to sonny, tells him of his destiny to sire the Anti-Messiah by the time he comes of age. Which, unfortunately for the residents of the center, is just a few nights away. 

Recognizing the danger after noticing that Daniel's present during these incidents too many times, jittery Charlie (Aarin Teich, in his late twenties) tries to warn the rest that the new kid is evil, but this is proven to be a lot difficult to do seeing he has the mental maturity of a tantrum-throwing twelve-year old who bonks his head on a tree-root when his suicidal girlfriend refuses to talk to him after, out of the blue, he asked her why she tried killing herself. Yeah. Is it any mystery, too, why he's also the butt of many jokes and bullying going around the center? When he gets upset, he gets intensely upset. Over-the-top and many screws loose.

Still, what remains of the group eventually figure out that Daniel is demonic when a visiting psychiatrist suffers a heart attack trying to run away from a session gone spooky. With Daniel's evil growing stronger, it's up to Charlie, House mother Jenny (Twink Caplan) and live-in guidance counselor Tony Montana (Edward Dloughy) to stop the Boy from Hell from bringing forth the devil's spawn, as well as killing anybody else who gets in his way.

As much as this movie is a laughable car wreck when it comes to acting and dialogue, the story does play around enough predictable horror-of-the-demonic tropes to make it an interesting watch. It's a terrible movie, sure, with cheap effects and cockeyed editing, but there's a charm to how well it wears its badness over the craziness of its story, making it quite easy to see Bloodspell (1989) as a guilty pleasure for lovers of bad cinema. Like, what other slashers out there have a finale overblown with cheese courtesy of a group hug and sappy end credit music right after divine intervention helped save the day? Not a lot, I imagine.

If you like your supernatural slashers absurdly ridiculous and fun for being that terrible, then seek out this hammy gem and enjoy!  

Bodycount:
1 female strangled to death
1 male set ablaze
1 male shredded through a woodchipper
1 male suffers through a heart attack
1 male ran through with a pike, struck by lightning
Total: 5