Starring Dafne Keen, Sophie Nélisse, Sky Yang, Jaleil Swaby, Nick Frost

Directed by Corin Hardy

Black Bear Pictures – in cinemas now

When a high school student finds an Aztec Death Whistle in her locker, she discovers that anyone blowing it will summon their future death to hunt them down.

The idea isn’t bad. If you are due to die from a piano landing on your head when you are 65, then blow the ancient whistle, and even if you’re a 25-year-old actor pretending to be an 18-year-old high school student (frankly the creepiest thing in the whole film) then you will be mysteriously flattened in the manner of what fate was due to send your way four decades later.

This example isn’t one of the deaths – don’t worry, no spoilers here – but you get the idea. And that’s the trouble with Corin Hardy’s Whistle, once the concept is explained in the opening act, it’s a case of rinse and repeat for the next 90 minutes. To be fair, a couple of the dispatches are nicely imaginative (and sometimes gross-out funny) but by setting its stall so early there’s little room for development, and you’re left waiting for the film to plod towards its predictable conclusion.

To keep me entertained in the second half, I took to spotting nerdy movie references, which included Chinatown, Flatliners, Paul Verhoeven and probably a few more that I missed.

Verdict: Whistle has a distinctly ‘straight to DVD’ patina about it. I left the cinema feeling like a student who ought to have been revising on a Sunday afternoon rather than browsing the shelves at Blockbuster. Think Final Destination but without the wit. 4/10

Martin Jameson

www.ninjamarmoset.com