Warning: Spoilers ahead for The Whisper Man
In The Whisper Man, a film out on Netflix Aug. 28, Adam Scott plays Tom Kennedy, a successful true crime novelist who becomes the victim of a crime when his son is abducted in their sleepy New Jersey town.
An adaptation of Alex North’s novel of the same name, the film is about the search to find the young boy (Acston Luca Porto) alive. Kennedy’s estranged father Pete Willis, a former detective played by Robert De Niro, comes out of retirement to search for the grandson he has never met. As the detective responsible for the conviction and imprisonment of a legendary murderer known as the “Whisper Man”—who targeted young boys—he’s trying to figure out who is doing his bidding.
Here’s what to know about the complicated family dynamics in the movie and its disturbing ending.
The original "Whisper Man" is Frank Carter (Michael Keaton), who is serving a life sentence in prison for killing five young boys after luring them from their homes in a whispery voice. According to North, he targeted especially vulnerable children, exploiting those who were neglected or had difficult relationships with their parents, and was known for “whispering outside the windows and drawing them away from their family in order to take them [as a] Pied Piper kind of figure.”
Twenty years later, Carter’s son Francis Jr. (Owen Teague) is the “Whisper Man” in the film, who lures Tom’s son Jake from his home. The movie suggests that he met his victims working as a child psychologist in a school.
The “Whisper Man” and his latest victim both come from families with sad father-and-son relationships.
Frank Carter arguably targeted young boys because he was sexually abused by his own father and wanted to do the same to other children as revenge. He would specifically go after children who lived in difficult family situations. His son, Francis Jr., is following in Frank’s footsteps, trying to be like a father he never got to know. “He’s looking for his father’s approval,” says North.
Tom and his son clash because they are mourning Tom’s wife and Jake’s mother—who died after a long illness—in different ways. For a fresh start, Tom moves the family to a new house and a new school in New Jersey. Jake, on the other hand, is slower to move on, carrying around what he calls a “packet of special things,” filled with doodads and pictures that belonged to his mother. Tom is also frustrated that Jake prefers to play with an imaginary girl in a blue sweater rather than make real human friends, and they get into disagreements in the movie over that.
When Jake is abducted, Tom reaches out to his own detective father Pete in an act of desperation, rather than for support. He’s always thought that his alcoholic father walked out on his family. During the search for Jake, Tom learns that his own childhood imaginary friend “Mr. Night” was actually his father reading him bedtime stories because bedtime was the only time his mother let his father visit him. Pete becomes a detective again, hoping he can finally have a relationship with his son and grandson.
The lightbulb moment occurs after Pete visits Frank in prison. Frank tries to get a rise out of Pete by saying his son writes true crime novels so he can be like his father.
The comment irks Pete, but then he realizes that Frank is sort of projecting that maybe Frank’s son Francis Jr. is trying to be like his own father. Believing the “Whisper Man” who took Jake could be Frank’s son, he works with detective Amanda Beck and her colleagues to track down the young man, who doesn’t live far from Jake.
A bloody ambush follows at the house where Francis Jr. is holding Jake hostage. Francis Jr. stabs Amanda, but she survives, though her injuries lead to a permanent limp. Francis Jr. stabs Pete to death. Pete’s first and last interaction with his only grandson is telling him to run out of the house as fast as he can.
Tom ends the film with fonder feelings about his father, as the final scenes show him living in Pete’s house. In the film’s final scene, Tom is looking through some photographs of his late wife that his son Jake has been hanging on to. He stops at a photograph of a girl in a blue sweater, realizing that is who his son’s imaginary friend is.
Francis Jr. is sent to prison, where he gets ambushed in the end, by his own father, who strips naked and strangles his son.
“Francis Jr. is the final victim of the original 'Whisper Man,'” says director James Ashcroft. And he says it’s natural for viewers to feel “conflicted” after watching the ending: “It’s not a fist bump moment of good guys vanquished by bad guys. That happens to some extent, but it's also a tragic story.”
He adds: “I love the idea of people walking away from a film in a gray space rather than the black and white one…That's what makes you have a conversation after a film. That's when a film exists long after the credits roll.”
