Well, we have our first mixed bag movie of spooky season. Whistle succeeds best when it’s dealing with the personal lives of its characters and falters most when dealing with the horror elements of the story.

The story follows a group of high school students each carrying their own traumas loves and resentments who are brought together by an ancient Aztec death whistle. All who hear the whistle are soon stalked by their future death. As the students begin seeing apparitions of their death they race against time to find a way to save themselves.

The cast is lead by a strong performance from Dafne Keen, most famous from her breakout role in Logan. She has a wonderfully understated quality. She communicates so much with her highly expressive eyes. She conveys the trauma of her past, the guilt she carries, and the hopes of a teenager beautifully and naturally. This is a movie in which the teens actually feel like teens for once.

This is where the movie works best. It takes its teen drama seriously. Rel, played by Sky Yang, has been in love with Grace, played by Ali Skovbye, since kindergarten, but his feelings have never been reciprocated. The scenes between them feature real angst and heartbreak. I felt for this poor kid. I felt for Grace having to break the heart of someone who didn’t deserve to get hurt. Keen gets to play a romance with Ellie, played by Sophie Nelisse. They have a genuine awkward chemistry that develops naturally and feels earned. If we had just done a teen drama about overcoming trauma I would’ve really loved it.

But this isn’t teen drama month. It’s horror month, and the horror here is just not quite up to snuff. I’ve identified a few issues with the horror that hold it back for me. One, too much cgi. The death stalkers are just not convincing CGI renderings. The flaming man from the start of the film never looks like he’s inhabiting the room with the human characters. I can’t be afraid a person will die, if I don’t believe the monster is in the room.

Two, the rules of these death stalkers is never made clear. The idea is that when you’re born the time and manner of your death are set. Blowing the whistle summons death, and death travels across time and space to find you and kill you. Okay, but why is death a person? Why isn’t just that instead of burning to death in twenty years, you burn to death today? How long does it take for death to find you? If you were going to die at 90, does death take longer than the person who would die at 70? Is there an order to who gets killed first? Is it like the closed to the whistle dies first?

The movie keeps its mythology vague and loose which doesn’t help create suspense or tension. I need to know a few basic details before I can worry about what’s going to happen. It keeps it so vague that the Aztec Death Whistle is called Mayan on a couple of occasions. I just wish more time and attention was paid to developing the movies mythology.

Three, the director shows us too much too quickly. He doesn’t do slow builds and slow reveals. In the opening scene, we see the charred and burning walking corpse wide open in a brightly lit gymnasium within two minutes of the movie starting. We don’t get to build suspense and terror. We just go, “of there’s the monster.” It’s like showing the shark in the first ten seconds of Jaws. It’s a mistake.

That said, the mov ie had a couple decent jump scares and some really great gory effects. I liked the finale. I liked the way death dispatched of the final three victims. Really gruesome and innovative and memorable.

But I will hold that this movie works best as a teen drama. It had heart, joy, and heartbreak. It had characters overcoming past trauma and growing into the people they want to be. It was really touching and worked well for me. I just wish the horror was at the same level of care and detail.

This is a half a cup of tea for me. It gets a B.