Corin Hardy Talks Iron Maiden and the Gory Kills of Cursed Horror Movie ‘Whistle’

The Hallow and The Nun director Corin Hardy is back this week with Whistle, a cursed object horror movie from screenwriter Owen Egerton (Blood Fest) centered around a lethal Aztec Death Whistle.

When an unlikely group of teens blows the whistle, Death comes for them all in personal, nightmarish ways. Independent Film Company and Shudder are releasing the teen horror movie in theaters this Friday, February 6.

Director Corin Hardy spoke with Bloody Disgusting about the film’s gnarly kills and catchy soundtrack ahead of the film’s release, citing cult classics like The Lost Boys as influences. At least in terms of tone. But the appeal of Whistle was that Egerton’s script provided Hardy with two things the seasoned horror fan had never seen before: rich new mythology and at least a centerpiece kill so gruesome and imaginative that it was a fun challenge to translate to the screen.

He explained, “Ultimately, the mythology of the whistle is that if you hear the sound of the whistle, it calls upon your future death to hunt you down, which was a really creepy idea. Actually, what’s nice about it is within that mythology, it determines once you know what that death is going to be, whether you die in five years from a car accident or whether you die in 90 years from old age, whatever it is, it’s going to come early and it’s going to visit you in the next day or two. So it was a bit like once you knew that, it informed how the death would have to play out in the movie and how I would then have to approach it. Obviously, being a lover of all things creative and inventive horror, I was relishing the chance to try and create some of these.”

Without spoiling the death itself, Hardy reveals the gory process of nailing this instantly memorable kill. “It tended to be a real kind of mixed set of ingredients with regard to practical effects and puppetry and visual effects and mixing techniques because I wanted every death to… It almost resembles a slightly different subgenre of horror with each death. I wanted the way we could create that to be different every time. And that one that you’re talking about was written on the page, and I read it, and then I stopped and reread it, and I was like, ‘Oh, not seen this before!’ Big sort of tick, that’s exciting. I want to do it. Almost want to do the movie because of this.

“But then I was like, how am I going to do that?” Hardy continued, “That’s when the journey starts. I put together lots of storyboards and had lots of meetings with different departments, prop department, set design, production design, prosthetics, animatronics, and visual effects so that we could try and create a different illusion every time so that it happens before your eyes and you’re hopefully just taken in by it.”

Despite its modern setting, Whistle feels like a throwback supernatural slasher in part because of its earworm soundtrack. The film’s music was incredibly important to Hardy, who also ensured the music had a narrative purpose.

So much so that the soundtrack is meant to immerse you further in the world of Whistle and its characters.

“I love music, and I almost work musically as I do visually. So any project I’m doing, I’m putting together a playlist. I always used to make lots of compilation tapes and cassettes for people. I made a big compilation for this, which you can see; it was called Death Lives, two opposite names that work within the Grief and the Memento Mori of this concept of Whistle. The music, I had a number of tracks, like the Tiger Army track, like The Concrete Blonde track, ‘Joey,’ the CHVRCHES track ‘Final Girl,’ which I’d been saving up like, ‘I’d really love to put one of these in a movie.’ You then need the movie to be able to make the track work. This movie, for me, is an ode to some of those slightly more retro movies as well, and felt like the one. So I wrote a lot of these tracks into the draft, but then I needed a reason. So I had this idea, which was that Chrys Willet, played by Daphne Keen, is grieving with guilt surrounding the death of her father.

“She inherited not only his jacket, this kind of army jacket that she wears that’s like her armor, but also she’s inherited his record collection, which just happens to be similar to mine. So it was a nice way to be able to put a lot of these tracks. But again, I wouldn’t want to crowbar a tracking for no reason, but I had a strong feeling of where these tracks were. So in a way, the music you’ll listen to is effectively what Chrys is listening to, which is her dad’s record collection. Then there are other songs like the Gunship track, which is a Cyndi Lauper cover, which is more like Rel’s [Sky Yang] music. It comes in when we have a sequence in Rel’s romantic heartbreak moment. So yeah, I made a character list of who might be listening to what.

“I was really thrilled to be able to get these tracks because I know quite a lot of the bands, like The Prodigy. I’ve done videos for Gunship and Iron Maiden as well,” Hardy points out an emerging music trend in horror. “It’s funny seeing the Bone Temple the other day and seeing this big ‘Number of the Beast‘ sequence. Then, in Stranger Things, they had ‘The Trooper.’ Now in Whistle, we’ve got ‘Killers.’ It’s the year of Iron Maiden.”

Hardy also acknowledges that Whistle presents the perfect scenario for continuation and that he’d be open to the idea of a sequel. “It would be one that you could tell more stories with, especially given the mysterious nature of this whistle and how it seems to keep managing to show up. So the idea that it’s been passed through hundreds or thousands of pairs of hands over the last thousand years means that it probably would keep going, and it would be exciting to tell more stories with.”

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