The Nun Director Breaks Down Dafne Keen’s New Death-Cheating Horror [Exclusive]

The Grim Reaper is up to his old nasty bag of tricks in Whistle. Directed by The Nun’s Corin Hardy, the horror film centers around a group of misfit teenagers who stumble across an ancient Aztec Death Whistle. Soon after blowing into the cursed artifact, they discover the sound invites their future deaths to hunt them down. As the body count mounts, Chrys (Dafne Keen), Ellie (Sophie Nelisse), and the gang must delve into the whistle’s dark origins in order to prevent their own bloody deaths… before it’s too late.

Hardy and Nelisse spoke to ComicBook about the whistle existing in the real world, carnage, portraying a victim over a survivor, and cheating Death. 

ComicBook: How much scarier is it to have the Death Whistle rooted in reality, that this object truly exists in our world?

Corin Hardy: I just think that adds a huge layer. It’s all very well to make up stories, but when they are rooted in not only in a real sacred object, but one with such an ancient past… If you research it, there are a lot of different mythologies surrounding it and what it was actually used for. When I read the script, I wasn’t familiar with it. But, then, I was even more fascinated by it. And, also, there’s the idea of telling a story about something we have never seen a story about, to my knowledge, and certainly in this genre. 

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Sophie Nelisse: Yeah, don’t bring it near me. I am a scaredy cat to begin with. I’m the nervous one whenever I watch a movie that tells characters, “Don’t go down the stairs. Don’t open that door.” So, whenever Corin brought that whistle out on set, I was like, “Can we not joke around and blow this?” I mean, we had to for numerous reasons, but it always left me with an icky feeling of like, “What if?”

Hardy: It’s a bit like Candyman. You can say Candyman in the mirror five times, and still people want to do it, just in case.

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Whistle embraces the gore and carnage. What makes a memorable kill and how did you go about delivering that? 

Hardy: That’s a big question. How long have you got? I’m sure like you, we have seen a number of horror movies and a big aspect of that is dealing with death or the ways in which people perish. This film is entirely centered around the coming of death and grief, in lots of layers. I wanted it to be immersive and a rollercoaster, entertaining movie. I didn’t want them all to be the same. I didn’t want them to make me feel like you are seeing a repeat of anything. The key to it was in Owen Egerton’s mythology, which was your future death will hunt you down. It is very much tied into what your own fate will be, and the idea that fate is out there waiting for you. From the moment you are born, so is your death. In its own right, that is a chilling concept. The characters sadly have to face their own perishments and they are all going to be different. 

It was both exciting and a challenge to then try and create different scares and different types of scares and almost different types of horror subgenres around each death. Some are short, sharp and shocking. Others are drawn out. I sort of thrive off the challenge of creativity. How are we going to achieve this? Let’s use practical effects as much as we can with prosthetics, animatronics and puppetry and stunts. It’s part of the fun of creating the illusion that you want to take the audience on the ride, which is why I think people come to see a horror movie. Obviously, there was this great character story with this undercurrent of grief and a romantic relationship that is blossoming amongst all this terror.

Without giving the fate of your character away, what’s more fun in a film like this? Getting to play a character that lives in the end or getting to portray a character who suffers an insanely gruesome death?

Nelisse: I kind of get the best of both worlds in this. I get to die and come back from the dead. I was able to survive and be a hero and kick death in the ass. But, also, I got to undergo that weird seizure in the final scene, where Chrys and I are fighting for each other. I was wet, bloody, and dirty and having to go through all these contortion poses. I had these light contact lenses that actually made me go blind. So, mine is definitely not as gory as other deaths in this story, but she undergoes a lot. I felt very lucky to be able to do both.

You starred in 48 Meters Down: Uncaged. What’s more frightening? Facing something tangible like sharks or something unseen like a supernatural entity stalking you?

Nelisse: Everything is scary because I am a scaredy cat. I will say I’ve never felt comfortable in the water, like the open water in the ocean. Although all the divers in 48 Meters Down were like, “There are no sharks here,” you never know. They could be migrating. You never know where they are, so I never felt safe. Whenever the divers called action and they would swim away, and I was alone… Yeah, the sharks are scarier. 

When we were doing the work in studio, we had this fun little prank they liked to do. They had a few dummy sharks that were handmade. They would randomly leave them in different places in the water tank. We would turn a corner, and there would just be a big shark. We never got used to it. I knew there were fake sharks in the water, but I never got used to seeing them unexpectedly. They always scared the hell out of me.      

There’s a loophole on how to escape death in Whistle… and that is to offer up somebody else. How do you feel that moral dilemma added an extra layer to the characters and their choices?

Hardy: I will talk about the character Rel, for instance, who is the first to fully take that concept. He has to figure that out, and you can see him doing the math of what that’s going to mean, which is ultimately you are going to have to sacrifice somebody else to save yourself. That becomes a selfish idea, but he is getting into this desperate place. It adds a huge conflict and problem for them to have to deal with. It’s something sadly very pressing in the moment, whether you are someone out there trying to help and save people or put yourself first.

Nelisse: Ellie is such a pure heart. We see that duality with Rel, but I don’t think there’s a moment that factors in Ellie’s thoughts, where she would ever put someone’s life in front of her own. I think it’s her greatest strength and her greatest weakness. At the same time, she is so selfless. I don’t think it was ever a question. She maybe tried to find this second loophole, but it’s not as horrible to deal with.  

Whistle releases in theaters on Friday, February 6. Leave a comment below and join the conversation now in the ComicBook Forum!