When it comes to the characterisation of children, Hollywood doesn't really have much of a gray area: a kid can be either unbearably cute and sweet or, alternately, a supernatural Hitler. That's pretty much it. When you go for the second option (which I encourage), your movie pretty much stands or falls with the child's acting performance. I'm glad to say "Whisper" really hits a bulls-eye in that field, because Blake Woodruff is an intensely frightening kid who nails every scene he's in. He's almost as scary as Harvey Stephens from "The Omen", the movie "Whisper" so transparently tries to ape. In fact Woodruff is almost too good, because it's incredibly frustrating how nobody ever picks up on his evilness. You know that scene from every slasher ever where you're supposed to yell "don't go in there!" when a character's being stupid? "Whisper" gives you that feeling for pretty much its entire running time, and nobody listens here either. Doesn't change the fact that it's quite entertaining though, because the scares are very well-done (despite the overuse of dream sequences) and the finale gives you everything you could want from this kind of B-movie. Just don't expect anything really creative.
Review of Whisper
