History and horror go together quite well. Pulling from the horrors of the real world is a staple of the genre. Everything from The Witch to The Amityville Horror and countless others have scared us using history as a guide. That’s precisely what director Corin Hardy, of The Nun fame, and writer Owen Egerton tried to do with their new movie Whistle. Specifically, they looked to the ancient Azetecs to inspire their latest work of fiction.
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Fango’s own Angel Melanson caught up with Hardy and Egerton ahead of the premiere of Whistle at this year’s Fantastic Fest. The movie centers on a group of high school kids who stumble onto a cursed object. Namely a whistle. Death ensues. For Hardy, it was an opportunity to do something he hadn’t seen on screen before.
“I’m always looking for fresh, simple and strong mythologies that you haven’t seen before,” Hardy explained. “I hadn’t the knowledge of an Aztec death whistle. I don’t think there’s a movie out there that I’ve seen that’s based around that mythology.”
The movie isn’t due to hit theaters until February 2026, but the fact that IFC premiered it so early bodes well. A lot of what was explored on screen sprang from the page of Egerton’s script, which really spoke to Hardy. As the filmmaker further revealed…
“When I read Owen’s script, I was kind of amazed to find out on researching that this is a real thing, this is a real historical object. What’s nice about it is there doesn’t seem to be one fixed mythology or belief. There’s a lot of suggestions, so it’s got a mystery surrounding it already. It’s ancient. There’s theories of, was it used for being blown as a battle cry going into war? Was it used in some ritual or some sacrifice? It’s been found in the hands of skeletons and in ruins.
There was a nice opportunity to take something that has a real, existing history to it, but also, in our movie, it’s very much being stolen and put in the wrong hands of people who shouldn’t really be messing around with it.”
As for Egerton, this was a chance to explore “youths in peril,” which is something he enjoys. That’s in no small part because young people are, in many ways, more alive, which makes them prime targets as subjects in a horror movie. Per Egerton:
“I think when we’re at that age, teenagers, there’s a couple things. One thing is we’re so alive. I’ve got teenagers. My [oldest] just turned 20, but I have young kids in my life and they are so alive. They are so passionate. They are exploring more. Their emotions go all over the place, and they’re thrilling. There’s a certain passion and energy that I think sometimes we’re in danger of losing as we get older.”
“I very much believe that a good horror movie should have as much life as it does death,” Egerton added. “Young people are in the midst of life.”
The movie stars Dafne Keen (Deadpool & Wolverine), Sophie Nélisse (Yellowjackets), Sky Yang (Rebel Moon), Percy Hynes White (My Old Ass) and Nick Frost (Shaun of the Dead). The official synopsis for the movie reads as follows:
“In Whistle, a misfit group of unwitting high school students stumble upon a cursed object, an ancient Aztec Death Whistle. They discover that blowing the whistle and the terrifying sound it emits will summon their future deaths to hunt them down. As the body count rises, the friends investigate the origins of the deadly artifact in a desperate effort to stop the horrifying chain of events that they have set in motion.”
Whistle is set to hit theaters on February 6, 2026. Be sure to check out our full interview with Hardy and Egerton above.
