Robert De Niro, Adam Scott and Michelle Monaghan in The Whisper Man. Photograph: David Lee/Netflix ©2026 View image in fullscreen Robert De Niro, Adam Scott and Michelle Monaghan in The Whisper Man. Photograph: David Lee/Netflix ©2026 Robert De Niro Review The Whisper Man review – Robert De Niro sleepwalks through silly Netflix potboiler A father and son must team up to find a serial killer in a cheaply made and increasingly uninteresting thriller
Benjamin Lee Fri 28 Aug 2026 09.01 CEST Last modified on Fri 28 Aug 2026 09.14 CEST Share Prefer the Guardian on Google I t’s not as if Robert De Niro ’s choices have improved all that much since the nadir of the mid-2000s (last year did see him crop up in a Scott Eastwood-led actioner and The Alto Knights ) but there’s something specifically rubbishy about his latest that transports us back to that particularly cursed time. The Whisper Man, a film as openly stupid as its title would suggest, could have been released in between the evil clone horror Godsend and imaginary friend thriller Hide and Seek , the kind of bottom-tier project that offers the actor a nice big cheque and the audience a nice little nap.
It’s a familiar pile of B-movie schlock – serial killers, missing children, bumps in the night, more imaginary friends – and there is some initial junky fun to be had as we wonder just where it all might be headed. I was hoping for a destination a little more deranged or vaguely surprising, the film making a silent promise that we’re hurtling toward somewhere wildly unexpected before dumping us in a ditch instead.
Read more It’s based on the British author Alex North’s novel that enough people tore through back in 2019 before it got picked up by Netflix . It’s at least been mercifully adapted into a film rather than a baggy limited series, as is too often the way with plot-heavy airport novels these days, but even stretching thin characters like this across a runtime just under two hours proves to be a struggle. Central is Tom Kennedy ( Adam Scott ), a crime fiction-writing widower moving back to his home town with young son Jake (which leads to ungainly lines including “you know your mom always wanted us to move back to the town we grew up in”). But he returns just as a child-stealing murderer is on the loose (whoops!), hunted by ambitious, stony-faced detective Amanda (Michelle Monaghan). His methods recall those employed by an infamous, and now imprisoned, serial killer called Frank ( Michael Keaton ) who was captured by the now-retired detective Pete (De Niro) who also happens to be Tom’s estranged father (“a shitty father but a good fucking detective!”). When Jake goes missing, the three are forced to combine efforts.
I have a nostalgic fondness for the grimy post- Seven attempts to bring infinitely hokier serial killer stories to the big screen, from Kiss the Girls to The Bone Collector, before the Saw franchise replaced mystery and suspense with gristle and innards. But while The Whisper Man overloads on hoariness – a killer who taunts the cops, a spookily underlit house, a gothic nursery rhyme repeated on a loop, a father taking matters into his own hands, a snarling criminal offering clues behind bars, a too-obvious suspect who might as well be called Mr Red Herring – it’s all taken far more seriously than it deserves to be. Any real, transporting throwback appeal is also spoiled by the dreaded Netflix look , flatter and greyer than ever here, that juicy studio gloss of the fi…