What It Is
A Netflix serial-killer thriller directed by James Ashcroft ("Coming Home in the Dark"), adapted by Ben Jacoby and Chase Palmer from Alex North's 2019 novel, produced by the Russo brothers' AGBO. Adam Scott plays Tom Kennedy, a widowed crime novelist whose eight-year-old son is snatched from a small town. He crawls back to his estranged father Peter, a retired cop played by Robert De Niro, because Peter once put away a killer nicknamed the Whisper Man decades earlier, and the new abduction has the old case's fingerprints on it. Michael Keaton, Michelle Monaghan, John Carroll Lynch, Hamish Linklater and Owen Teague fill out the ensemble. Landed August 28, 2026.
The Case For
Ashcroft can shoot a moody rural exterior, and the first act is genuinely competent — grey skies, a haunted kid, a father with the wrong instincts. Adam Scott is doing real work as Tom, playing the grief with more restraint than the script deserves. Keaton is enjoying himself in a smaller role. John Carroll Lynch, as always, elevates every scene he's parked in. The Alex North source novel had a solid hook, and about 25 minutes of that hook survives the adaptation intact. If you want a Friday-night procedural that doesn't ask much, the machinery works well enough to keep you sitting down.
Where It Falls Down
Every choice is the safest one on the menu. The Russo house style flattens the material into what the A.V. Club correctly called "Netflix sludge." De Niro isn't playing Peter so much as standing near him, drifting through readings that suggest he found out about the scene ten minutes before the take. The mystery telegraphs itself early, the child-in-peril beats are lifted wholesale from a dozen better movies, and Ashcroft's genuine talent for dread (see his previous film) gets sanded off by an algorithm-friendly runtime. A late-act physical confrontation involving an 83-year-old lead is exactly as convincing as you'd fear.
Who'll Love It, Who'll Bail
If you tolerated "The Little Things," liked "Reptile," or genuinely enjoyed the last three David Baldacci adaptations, you'll be fine. Parents who fold laundry to serial-killer thrillers will get their money's worth, which is zero. Anyone who came for Ashcroft's teeth or a real De Niro performance will be out by the 40-minute mark. Fans of the novel are going to be the angriest people in the room; the book's cleverest structural move is neutered here.
The Verdict
SLOP because the ingredients are prestige and the meal is a Lean Cuisine. You've got a Booker-shortlisted director, three Oscar-caliber leads, a bestselling source, and the finished product feels focus-grouped down to the shot length. Nothing here is offensively bad. Nothing here is alive either. Scott is trying, Ashcroft has a couple of frames that remember what atmosphere feels like, and the rest is content — plot beats delivered at the pace of an autoplay preview, a killer whose menace is entirely borrowed from the sound design, and a lead actor who's clearly cashing the check. When this much talent produces this little friction, that's the verdict. Serviceable at 41% on the Tomatometer, and serviceable is the ceiling.