The latest thriller created by Netflix makes use of a common children’s rhyme that will become the main reason for the frightening mystery.

Sometimes, some scary horror stories have nothing to do with any monsters and blood and gore. What they have in common is the fact that they start with something that seems absolutely harmless, safe, and familiar. It was always a subject of horror when something that people used to trust and believe in gets twisted into something else.

Based on the bestselling book written by Alex North, this new thriller created by Netflix combines the elements of a crime story and psychological horror, yet what catches one’s attention the most about this movie is a children’s rhyme about Whisper Man.

The rhyme makes the Whisper Man frightening long before he ever appears

The novel revolves around Tom Kennedy, a widowed author who writes novels on crimes and whose son Jake gets kidnapped. To know more about what happens, Tom approaches his dad Pete, who retired from being a detective and was instrumental in capturing a serial killer called Whisper Man many years back.

This becomes all the more disturbing because it turns out that Frank Carter, the person thought to be the Whisper Man, never left prison all along. This mystery alone is quite disturbing, but it is the rhyme associated with the Whisper Man that makes this story unique.

Unlike the rhyme which warns kids against the monsters in their beds, the rhyme here makes one believe that danger may come in the form of a whisper coming through the bedroom window. It is such an innocent-looking rhyme that it can be easily used by children at school; yet it is disturbing enough to keep ringing in our minds.

This fits perfectly into the psychological side of the movie as well. It is not the constant violence and the exposure of the murderer that induces fear in people, but rather anticipation, uncertainty, and the possibility that there is something in the rhyme after all.

Every time that the rhyme comes up, people are reminded that maybe there is someone out there already listening. It is a great technique for creating a sense of fear in the atmosphere as the very words become horrifying.

The real horror goes beyond the serial killer mystery

James Ashcroft, who will direct the movie, has already revealed that the emotional side of The Whisper Man is associated with father-to-son relations, and that aspect seems to be accompanying the main plot all along.

Alex North had the ideas of parental fear and subconscious transferring of certain traits from generation to generation on his mind when he was working on the novel. This makes the rhyme not only a frightening myth but a representation of fear, guilt, and uncertainty that constantly accompany the characters through the whole story.

In contrast to being merely something that scares kids, it shows how past traumas influence the upcoming generations. If the movie can manage to keep the balance between emotional and psychological aspects of the story, then the resulting thriller is bound to be memorable.