Review: Adam Scott and Robert De Niro give heart to twisty crime thriller 'The Whisper Man'

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Set us as preferred In crime-thriller terms, Alex North’s bestselling 2019 debut novel, “The Whisper Man,” has it all — a terrific title, a psycho serial killer (complete with his own urban-legend jingle), a winsome and endangered child, a possible ghost and lots of family trauma.For the film adaptation, premiering Friday on Netflix, you can add a truly banging cast that includes Robert De Niro, Adam Scott, Michelle Monaghan and Michael Keaton.In the race to replace the notion of “TV movie” with streaming-only films that could, in another era, compete at the box office, “The Whisper Man” is as good as it gets.

While it does not achieve the depth or brilliance of its obvious influences — “The Silence of the Lambs,” “The Sixth Sense” — it is a twisty and very welcome reminder of an age when psychological adrenaline-thumpers like “Kiss the Girls” and “The Bone Collector” drew crowds to the cineplex.Directed by James Ashcroft and written by Ben Jacoby and Chase Palmer, “The Whisper Man” has been moved from the U.K.

to the U.S., and opens with an overhead shot of an autumn woodland in New Jersey.The day is drear, the music ominous — and with good reason.

Within the trees, Det.Amanda Beck (Monaghan) is overseeing the search for a missing boy only to find the corpse of another.Unaware of this sinister preamble, Tom Kennedy (Scott) is moving into the area with his young son, Jake (Acston Luca Porto).

They have sorrows of their own — a wife and mother recently lost to cancer — and have decided to start fresh in the town where she and Tom grew up.If their new Craftsman-style house seems overlarge for two, with plenty of shelter-mag built-ins, well, Tom is a successful crime novelist and there’s also a leaky attic and a creepy, warrenlike basement to be dealt with.In a landscape litte...