"The Whisper Man" is based on British author Alex North's novel of the same name. The film opens with police officers searching for a body in the woods. This is where we first meet Detective Amanda Beck (Michelle Monaghan), who is looking for a missing boy. She eventually finds his body.

But this is not the first time the detectives have followed this path. Twenty years earlier, they dealt with a very similar case. A psychopath was kidnapping children and killing them. Before killing his victims, he would record their voices as if he were interviewing them. He would whisper questions to them and the children would answer. That is why he became known as the "Whisper Man." Once the detectives found these cassette tapes, it was not long before the children's bodies were discovered.

And now, 20 years later, the same thing starts happening again.

Beck goes to the detective who caught the original Whisper Man 20 years ago, Pete Willis (Robert De Niro), and asks for his help. At first, Pete refuses, but of course, this is a thriller. He will eventually have to get involved.

At the same time, we meet Tom Kennedy (Adam Scott), a crime novelist who has lost his wife. After her death, Tom moves with his son Jake (Acston Luca Porto) to a huge house where his wife grew up. The house is so big that you immediately suspect something bad is going to happen there. But I honestly kept wondering what two people were going to do with such a huge house, especially when Jake was already afraid to even go upstairs after losing his mother.

There is also something interesting about the first scene where we see the house. A piece of music very similar to the score Hans Zimmer composed for "Interstellar" starts playing. For a moment, it feels like we have suddenly entered a very familiar atmosphere, as if the film is trying to create the same kind of mystery and tension.

The reason for moving to this house is explained with a simple "she would want that." But is that really enough? I did not find it very convincing.

Jake also starts seeing strange things, including a girl in a blue sweatshirt, which makes Tom uncomfortable. This is where the film starts leaving too many things unanswered. For example, the original Whisper Man used to teach the children he kidnapped a lullaby before killing them. But how does Jake know this lullaby?

I later learned that the book actually explains this. Jake's mother grew up in the same area and taught him the song. The book also explains that Jake was the one who wanted to move to the house because his mother had grown up there. If these details had been woven into the film more clearly, I think many of the things that feel like they are just hanging there would have made much more sense. The story could have felt much deeper.

Jake is trying to adapt to his new life, his new house and his new school. Meanwhile, the new Whisper Man starts targeting vulnerable children and eventually finds Jake. He comes to Jake's window at night and talks to him, although the film does not really make it clear what is happening between them.

Then one night, Tom hears something. He wakes up and realizes that Jake is not in his bed. He starts looking for him and finds Jake standing at the front door, as if he is about to open it. Then a blue-gloved hand reaches through the mailbox toward Jake. Tom sees it and intervenes.

But then Tom acts as if he never saw what happened, as if that hand had never come out of the mailbox. How, Tom? You saw the blue-gloved hand too. How can you yell at Jake, blame him for imagining things and then continue with your life as if nothing happened?

At moments like this, the film almost feels like it is insulting the audience's intelligence. It is obvious that someone is after your child. Instead of protecting him, you leave him alone?

Eventually, Jake is kidnapped by the new Whisper Man. This brings Tom and Pete together, but there is still a lot of tension between them. Tom is angry because Pete left him and his mother years ago, and he has never really forgiven him for it. Pete occasionally tries to start a father-son conversation with Tom, but Tom is not interested. Understandably, all he wants to focus on is finding his son and bringing Jake back. At the same time, Pete carries the guilt of what happened years ago. Despite everything between them, the two have to work together to find Jake. Pete is a very bad father but, apparently, a very good detective.

This is where Robert De Niro comes in, and unfortunately, I did not find his performance very convincing. Especially in the scenes between Pete and Tom, he does not seem to be able to deliver the emotion the scenes need. The role itself is not particularly challenging, and De Niro often looks like he just wants to finish the scene and move on.

Adam Scott, on the other hand, does a better job of showing a father who has lost his wife and is now terrified of losing his son as well. He can be a little too much in some scenes, but at least you can feel what Tom is going through.

One of the scenes I was most curious about was Pete's first encounter with the original Whisper Man, Frank Carter (Michael Keaton), following Jake's kidnapping. And I think Michael Keaton fits the role very well. But because he is the original Whisper Man, I expected much more from this scene. I was expecting an encounter reminiscent of "The Silence of the Lambs." I wanted more tension, more talk about what happened 20 years ago and a stronger sense of the history between them.

Instead, it is a fairly uneventful scene. The Whisper Man mocks the police, but he does not feel as clever or terrifying as I expected him to be. Then there is the bigger question: Who is the second Whisper Man, and why is he doing this 20 years later?

The problem is that the film does not really give us a satisfying answer. There is no big plot twist that makes you look back at everything you have watched and think, "Oh, so that's why." In fact, the ending is quite predictable. By the middle of the film, you can already guess where things are heading.

Sometimes I cannot help but wonder if some Netflix thrillers could be much better with a little more time and effort. Can we say another film fell victim to Netflix?