REVIEW: WHISPERS

WHISPERS is a Bulgarian-American first-time feature from writer/director Miroslav Petkov, which in and of itself is a crazy kind of ambition to attempt! The movie begins as a found footage film that quickly turns into a split-narrative suspense/horror story that largely does away with the found footage except for a few flashes here and there.

People are going missing in Bonnivar park, including journalist Simon Peterson (Rudy Ledbetter) featured at the beginning of the tale, and everyone who goes looking for them turns up missing as well.

Nick (Nikola Penchev) is looking for his girlfriend Sophie (Simona Grozeva) who disappeared in the park along with her friend Maggie (Simona Rose) He enlists the aid of Maggie's brother Alex (Miroslav Petkov) who brings along enforcer Caine (Velin Borata) as backup.

The story then breaks up into each person's perspective on what is going on at the mysterious, abandoned building complex within Bonnivar park, with most perspectives ending in bloodshed and disaster. At some point another perspective is introduced, that being Gwen (Nikol Topalova) who appears as a savior-type of figure that has a complex past with Alex and Maggie.

I won't go farther into the mystery here, or go deep into specifics, but this is an interesting, albeit messy film.

Now to be perfectly honest, I'm not sure if the story is supposed to take place in Bulgaria or America, and the film never exactly makes it clear. A lot of the dialogue is stiff and clunky, but to be fair most of the actors are speaking in English and not their native tongue, so you have to kind of give them a pass there. Picture and sound are a bit on the substandard side, but this is a low-budget indie after all, so that comes with the territory.

The story itself with its multuiple narratives and flashbacks was also pretty damn confusing at times, and the whole park/building setup while explained for the most part was fairly confusing as well.

So this was a clunky, confusing, messy film...and yet still pretty compelling with a couple of really good jump scares and one pretty badass thing that I won't spoil, but in no way saw coming! I was interested and intrigued the entire time trying to figure out what the hell was going on, and despite its raw and gritty nature, it kept me invested in the story until the end.