Robert De Niro in Netflix Thriller

The producing muscle of Anthony and Joe Russo likely played a part in the recruitment of such an accomplished cast for Netflix’s The Whisper Man. James Ashcroft’s thriller may feel more driven by content than craft, but this adaptation of the bestselling novel by British crime author Alex North is solidly entertaining, if not quite as bone-chilling as its plot about a copycat serial killer preying on preteen boys suggests. In that sense, it doesn’t approach the accelerating visceral intensity of the New Zealander director’s 2021 debut Coming Home in the Dark, but as streaming fodder, it gets the job done.

Adapted by Ben Jacoby and It co-screenwriter Chase Palmer, the movie jumps right in with a police search through a semi-rural New Jersey area led by Detective Amanda Beck (Michelle Monaghan), looking for Neil Spencer, a boy abducted from his home the night before. No trace of Neil is found, but the dead body of another missing boy turns up.

Around the same time, widowed crime writer Tom Kennedy (Adam Scott) relocates from the Jersey shore to the small town where he and his late wife grew up, hoping the change of environment will benefit his traumatized eight-year-old son Jake (Acston Luca Porto). But Jake seems ill at ease in the spacious old home his dad rented (sharp work from production designer Anastasia White), seeking comfort in the presence of an imaginary friend he brought along in the move.

Meanwhile, Det. Beck finds eerie similarities between the recently discovered corpse and those of victims in a trail of killings from some 25 years earlier, committed by a murderer who became known as the Whisper Man for the way he beckoned his prey through their windows at night. The creepy nursery rhyme associated with those crimes has lingered in gruesome local folklore. But the culprit, Frank Carter — Netflix has requested that reviews not reveal the name of the unbilled actor playing him — remains behind bars, serving a life sentence.

Carter was apprehended by Det. Pete Willis (Robert De Niro), who retired soon after but has quietly continued obsessing over a sixth victim whose body was never found. When Jake is abducted, it emerges that Pete is Tom’s estranged father and has never even seen his grandson. The only clues come in the familiar form of a child’s drawing, accompanied by a cassette with a voice recording of the missing boy, mimicking the methods of Carter a quarter-century before.

The writers show a deft sense of economy in going light on the details of Tom’s cold distance from his father, aside from a mention of Pete’s drinking. But it’s easy to imagine the absentee parenting of a man likely married to his job and consumed by one case in particular.

The bitterness Tom feels toward his father surfaces as a torrent of contempt when they meet at a diner, where the novelist demands that Pete get involved in the investigation, despite repeated assertions that he has left detective work behind. Beck also asks for the veteran cop’s help; she has a hunch that Carter might hold the key to finding both Neil Spencer and Jake, but the convicted killer has only ever consented to be questioned by Pete.

This is a good role for De Niro, remorse, fatigue and solitude written all over his face as Pete attempts to extend an olive branch to the stubbornly indifferent Tom. The psychological gamesmanship between Pete and Carter when the former detective comes around to cooperating brings a bristling sense of his long and frustrating history of being toyed with by the killer. 

One person of interest in the case is Norman Collins (Hamish Linklater), an elegant sicko with a large collection of murder memorabilia, who twice in recent months visited the prison where Carter is incarcerated. But other possibilities also surface, pointing to a more direct connection between the present-day horrors and those of the Whisper Man, while building to explosions of violence and tragedy in the concluding stretch.

Ashcroft directs with a sure hand even if some developments late in the action clearly owe more to pulpy crime fiction than psychological verisimilitude and he doesn’t quite stick the landing. But the actors keep it compelling enough even when the pace threatens to lag here and there, adding emotional texture through the script’s contemplation of difficult father-son dynamics. Colin Stetson’s score helps maintain the unsettling atmosphere. 

The Whisper Man is not going to challenge The Silence of the Lambs as the high-water mark of this genre, nor does it have the benefit of a menacingly unhinged Nicolas Cage performance, like the one that made Longlegs turn heads. (Or for that matter like John Lithgow’s malevolent turn in Ashcroft’s mixed-bag second feature, The Rule of Jenny Pen.) But the movie has enough strengths to earn traction in the Netflix algorithm.