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 It’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.

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