Corin Hardy and Owen Egerton discuss the new horror film Whistle starring Dafne Keen and Sophie Nélisse, which premieres at Fantastic Fest 2025.
Director Corin Hardy and writer Owen Egerton have teamed up for the upcoming horror film Whistle, a frightening new take on a mysterious and ancient artifact. The film follows a group of high schoolers who discover a pre-Columbian death whistle, an item of unknown origin that, when blown, is said to signal a death. As they become obsessed with the strange object, the teens unleash a terrifying curse that forces them to confront their own mortality.
Mama’s Geeky sat down with with Corin Hardy and Owen Egerton about the film’s Fantastic Fest premiere. They opened up about the casting process, the eerie design of the death whistle, and what it was like working on a film during the writers’ strike.
Working with Dafne Keen and Sophie Nélisse
Mama’s Geeky: Can you talk about working with them Dafne Keen and Sophie Nélisse?
Corin Hardy: Casting is such a big part of a movie. Owen’s script had these five main roles – I call it the Breakfast Club – these high school kids. There’s a trio, and then Chris and Ellie are the two leads, and they have a kind of love story that goes through the movie. So it’s so important to find two actresses who are not only going to give phenomenal performances but also be able to click together. We were under a lot of pressure for time; you don’t have the luxury of six months before making a movie to go through all that.
I was really, really happy to get to meet Dafne and Sophie and have them accept these roles and then get them together and find out that they hit it off like a house on fire. Since making the movie, they’ve been constantly best friends. They go on holiday together and everything. It was really a matter of getting our own little Breakfast Club together.
In that prep period, I got them together a week before the movie. Rather than doing rehearsals, I just wanted to get them together socially. I put together a kind of experience to take them out. We went to an escape room together, and I said, “Do this in your characters.” I played Mr. Craven, the schoolteacher, and said, “We’re going on a trip. Imagine I’m your schoolteacher. I want you to do this in your characters.” It was brilliant because it was like, look, there are no lines to follow, but it will help us if there are any questions about who they are.
I also asked Owen to write a couple of pages on each character – their backstories, character relationships, and how each character knew or didn’t know each other. So when we went into the movie, it was actually a hot tub scene at night, which was not as freezing cold as it was in Toronto in November. I knew the last thing I wanted was for them to be questioning, “How do I know this person, or what’s my relationship with them?” So anyway, that’s the long answer. But Daphne and Sophie, I couldn’t have asked for better actresses. They were fantastic.
They’re playing very different roles and it’s also great to see them in a movie together because Dafne’s mainly known from X-23 when she was very young and then more recently Wolverine and Deadpool. But to have a movie that she’s leading on her own with Sophie from Yellowjackets, I think it’s going to be exciting for people to see them leading this movie. Dafne has such a classic face as well. They just shine.
Toughing Out The Writer’s Strike
Mama’s Geeky: Owen, for you, were you ever picturing how your short story could be longer and become a movie while you were writing it?
Owen Egerton: With this particular one, when I was writing the short story, I was already thinking about the movie, which was great. It was really fun to be visually intrigued. It has those moments that stand out because, you know, it could be a great short story that is internal and brooding and is about the internal life of a character. But this one was already sparking with things that I couldn’t wait to see on the big screen one way or another. And then when I wrote the script and Corin was like, “This is how I’m going to do it,” I was like, “Oh, that’s better and bigger and even, you know, amplified.” So it’s been a real blast to see that come to be.
Mama’s Geeky: Can you guys talk about how you got together on this project?
Corin Hardy: Yeah, it’s a funny story because it’s sort of backward, really. People are like, “How long have you guys known each other? You’ve known each other since you were at school together.” And we’re like, “Well, the truth is, I was sent Owen’s script just before the writer’s strike.” And so when I came on board, I wasn’t even able to meet or talk to the guy that had created it until the strikes resolved. So I had to just dive in, get making the movie, trusting that whoever this guy, Owen Egerton, was would be supportive of where I was taking it. Luckily, it turned out we completely hit it off.
I think the first time I met Owen physically was when he came to set in the middle of the shoot when it was like -15 degrees in Toronto. We built a fairground for two nights of night shoots. It snowed, and it was absolutely like, man, and there’s Owen. Obviously, we talked a little before that, but it’s just been like we’ve known each other for a long time. I think we have the same sensibilities and a lot of things, and also beliefs in human beings and life and death and grief.
Mama’s Geeky: What was it like for you, Owen, knowing someone was working on this during the strike and you couldn’t talk to them?
Owen Egerton: I finished the script just days before the strike and handed it to the producers and said, “If this strike happens, we can’t talk.” And I was like, “Go, go.” So things were happening, but I didn’t know what happened. I’d heard rumors of someone’s like, “Hey, I heard someone’s auditioning for your movie.” I’m like, “What do you mean?” But then, yeah, then I met Corin, and I was actually pretty nervous. We were going to Zoom. Corin was in the UK, and I was up near Boston, and I was like, “Oh, shit, this is going to be interesting. How am I going to feel about this?”
Almost immediately, as we started talking, Corin was surrounded by all this cool art and sculpture stuff that he makes. It’s always his workshop. He’s like, “Oh yeah, just carving this cool, beautiful thing.” And he says, “Oh, let me show you how I’m going to do this one particular scene,” and he starts showing me storyboards of some of his sketches. He’s a really talented artist and sketcher, and I just went, “Oh, thank God this guy is making this movie. He’s going to make such a great movie.” That was a thrill. And ever since, again and again, it’s just been really fun to see his ideas and see my ideas and where they melt together.
Designing the Death Whistle
Mama’s Geeky: Can you guys talk about the design of the whistle?
Corin Hardy: This was, again, a blessing to read a script that had a really strong, simple mythology, which revolves around an ancient artifact that comes from real life. But it’s incredibly mysterious. If you research the death whistle, there’s no definite knowledge of what exactly it was used for. There’s a lot of different texts, and it’s spiritual and has different mythologies, really. So it was nice to have something that we could kind of run with in our own way, be respectful and honor what we knew about it, but ultimately it’s something that’s been taken from the place that it was used for and used by people that shouldn’t be messing with it.
With all that in mind, designing it visually, I look for these things when I’m taking on a movie: simple, strong ideas with visual sensibilities and emotional qualities. And this script had so much in all of that sense. There’s a non-spoiler, but there are quite a few deaths in one. I never would have thought they would be so imaginative and creepy and shocking and strange, but they come from the sort of the central character. And if you look at that death whistle that’s on the table there, you can see it has thoughts going on. It has a sort of—I wanted to be able to show it in closeup in the movie like it’s a central character. And if you light it in different ways, it has a different kind of feel. If you light it kind of underneath—oh no, I don’t like underneath.
So for the design, we first researched everything we could on real death whistles, and they are brilliantly strange-looking—bone carving, stone, ceramics. They were found in the hands of skeletons sometimes without their heads. And I wanted to create something that had a history to it and carvings from different cultures. It has a little bit of a secret to it. It was designed with a Spanish guy called Daniel Carrasco. And we went through about 50 or 60 different looks because I was very particular about how it holds up. I didn’t want it to just look like an evil thing. I wanted it to look like something that has history, both in the broken-down nature of it and the carvings and the languages. There are little words in different places.
Owen Egerton: One of the things I love about it is that you can feel its history. You can feel the idea that it’s been held in the hand of hundreds of people across dozens of cultures and thousands of years. There are aspects of that, but there are snippets of language written in it, some of which no longer exist or no one knows how to read. The idea is that its history is much stranger and much deeper than anyone can perceive. And in that comes an extremely honorable artifact that definitely shouldn’t have found its way into the hands of high schoolers. And then, a little bit like Frodo’s ring in Lord of the Rings, it’s like, if you’re left alone with it, you’re going to be drawn to blowing it. You’re going to want to know what it sounds like.
Corin Hardy: That’s funny. The amount of people who don’t—I’ll say, “Look, if you want to, you sit down and blow that, be my guest. Do it now.” “Nope, I’m good.” “I know it’s a movie. I’m good.” Every time I met a cast member, I had a death whistle there, and I would say, “You know, like, do you want to hear what it sounds like?” “No, no, no, no.” You can buy a kind of imitation one on Amazon, which actually does sound impressively scary because the sound it makes is a real like sort of pain, whistle, scream, shriek. So on set, I would use one because it had that mechanism. And in horror movies, when you need to get a reaction out of someone, whether it’s a shock or a timing thing, there were a lot of times I’d do a lot of claps in other movies or hit wood blocks together. I was able to blow the whistle. So the cast and the crew were a bit freaked out because everyone hears it, and it’s going to bring forth your future death.
Mama’s Geeky: How many of them did you have?
Corin Hardy: So in the movie, this is the hero closeup. That’s the actual one there. And then we had the actual scale size, which is a bit more of a stunt one. It doesn’t have that mechanism. This was slightly smaller. And so Daphne would be handling this and the various people who shouldn’t have really got their hands on it. And then, and then there were—yeah, I had three of those hero ones because they’re very special, precious things. And, you know, in a movie, if it falls on the floor, it cracks or anything like that. And then they just made these cool mini ones as well. It was a joy to be able to have, like I said, something that actually comes from a real place that we could also reimagine and make our own and reflect a certain respect and honor as well as something that’s creepy.
Why Premiere At Fantastic Fest?
Mama’s Geeky: What do you think it is about Fantastic Fest that makes it such a great place to premiere Whistle?
Corin Hardy: I’ll say first because we’re very different. Owen, this is part of his life for the last 20 years. This is my first year. I’ve heard about Fantastic Fest throughout being a director, and I had the hallow tour around different film festivals around the world, and I always wanted to come to Fantastic Fest, but The Nun wasn’t like a festival movie. It sort of went straight to the cinema. So to have this one as the world premiere, I was really excited because I know it’s the biggest horror genre festival in America. And it’s true, it’s a real family feel here. The crowds are just really warm, welcoming. Everyone’s excited. They want to see the movies, and also there’s a real air of, I believe it’s called “Chaos Reigns” to this place, which I love. There’s been some wild stuff. And the other night, Owen invited me to be part of the debates, and that was something I’d never done in my life before, which was really exciting. So yeah, I’m really excited about Thursday night. And this audience seeing the movie for the first time feels perfect.
Owen Egerton: Yeah, you know, there are two people I come to—people that I love hanging out with at Fantastic Fest. And one, of course, is the people that you’ve been seeing for 20 years and have known through the festival, and you see maybe once a year, this sort of summer camp of horror. And then the other people who I love to hang out with are people who are experiencing it for the first time because there’s always a moment with someone who’s experiencing it for the first time when you just see their eyes go a little wider. “Oh, this is Fantastic Fest.” Maybe it’s watching Tim League crawl over tables, yelling, “Chaos Reigns,” or maybe it’s seeing someone get slammed with a mace in the middle of a boxing ring in South Austin, dressed in a full coat of armor. But there’s always a moment, and I saw that moment with Corin earlier this week of just like, “Oh, okay.” And to have a film here, especially on the 20th anniversary, it’s a dream. It’s just such a community of horror fans, like aficionados who are just delighted. So it feels like you’re getting to make a meal for foodies who just love the same kind of stuff that you love. And we get to just sit all together and scream and laugh and cry together.
