The trailer for “The Whisper Man” introduces a tense child abduction thriller led by Adam Scott and Robert De Niro. Scott plays a distressed writer for the second time this year, following “Hokum,” while De Niro takes on a quieter and more somber role as a retired police detective. Their characters share a fractured family history and now face a case that connects them to a convicted serial killer from decades earlier.
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Scott stars as a widowed crime writer whose eight-year-old son disappears. The abduction leaves him searching for help from the person he has kept at a distance: his estranged father. De Niro plays that father, a former police detective who carries unresolved memories from his career and conflict within his present family life. The search gives him one final case and the possibility of finding peace.
The trailer places their difficult relationship inside a larger mystery. The investigation leads them back to Frank Carter, the convicted serial killer behind the Whisper Man name. Police caught and imprisoned Carter decades ago, yet a predator now appears to target children through the same disturbing pattern. He whispers outside their windows before taking them, turning the case into a frightening question about who has revived the Whisper Man’s crimes.
That question drives the trailer. How can Frank Carter prey on children again when police put him away so many years ago? The preview offers the mystery without revealing its answer, leaving Scott and De Niro’s characters to confront the connection between the current abduction and the old investigation. The case forces the writer to depend on his father’s experience while the former detective returns to a history that still troubles him.
The Whisper Man targets children by approaching their homes and whispering outside their windows. A nursery rhyme about open doors, unlatched windows and tapping on the glass gives the threat a familiar form while raising the possibility that Carter’s crimes have started again.
Michelle Monaghan, Hamish Linklater, Owen Teague, Acston Luca Porto and Will Brill join Scott and De Niro in the cast. The official synopsis keeps its focus on the abducted child, the widowed writer and the retired detective. As father and son work together, they uncover a link between the disappearance and Carter’s decades-old case. “The Whisper Man” arrives on Netflix on August 28.
