Partly an Irish film, it's a must-watch for fans of the Final Destination franchise.

A Canadian and Irish co-production, the film is set in a small American town and follows a misfit group of high school students (including MCU star Dafne Keen) who stumble upon a cursed object, an ancient Aztec Death Whistle.

Not realising its power, the teens blow into the whistle, unleashing ancient evils into each of their lives.

Whistle isn't the most original horror thriller in the world. After all, it arrives hot on the heels of last year's phenomenal Final Destination: Bloodlines and also the darkly fun 2025 flick The Monkey.

Like Whistle, both movies centre around strange curses that cause those afflicted by them to die in extreme ways that are so over-the-top and grotesque that they wind up being funny.

While Whistle lacks the humour and dread-inducing set-pieces of FDB or the odd pathos of The Monkey, it still makes for great dumb fun.

Owen Egerton's script puts one cool and unique twist on the formula. When a character blows into the cursed whistle, all who hear its sound will die in the coming days from whatever death they had previously been destined to endure.

For instance, the lead characters' chain-smoking teacher (a fun Nick Frost, Shaun of the Dead), who confiscates the whistle and later blows into it, is discovered dead from advanced lung cancer. This is despite having had no previous symptoms.

This premise allows director Corin Hardy (The Hallow, The Nun) to stage some genuinely exciting, bravura set-pieces in which our doomed protagonists try to outrun the inevitable. The best of these is set at a nocturnal, spooky, small-town harvest festival, where it becomes difficult to distinguish between the costumed revellers and real demonic spirits.

Dafne Keen makes her gloomy goth-adjacent protagonist someone you care about. Sophie Nélisse (Heated Rivalry), playing a friend and possible love interest, injects some hope and sunshine.

Even as it grows increasingly ludicrous (culminating in a hilarious - possibly unintentionally so - post-credits scene), Whistle is made with enough skill and style that you can't help but recommend it to horror fans.

Whistle is in cinemas now.