Out of all of Koontz's work, why Whispers? Why was this a movie? For years, I was hoping they would turn The Bad Place into a movie, but no, this makes it to film. Why? Based on the 1980 book, Whispers follows a man who cunningly stalks a female victim ( played by Victoria Tennant). She kills him in self defense, but he seems to have returned. How? And what's worse, the police can't help her, because they don't believe her story. Has he returned from the dead, or is it an evil twin? Find out on a brand new episode of....Mystery Train Derailed! Some of the elements are okay, and when I say okay, I just mean okay, I mean they don't exactly work together, but it's okay to watch anyway. What am I talking about? Watch it, you'll see what I'm talking about. For the most part, Whispers is a just a "WTF" movie, some scenes are barely passable ( For example, tell me what you think of the man having his way with the woman in the morgue, or the man who is making out with his reflection in the mirror.) I want to say it's a mystery suspense movie, but there's very little mystery, and what I saw wasn't exactly suspense. In my opinion, all of Koontzs work that was brought to the screen got screwed, especially Watchers, which doesn't even come close to stacking up as tall as the book did. Maybe they should just....let sleeping dogs lie, so to speak. 4 out of 10. Hey? Seen Mr. Murder? That was a screwed up movie!

I haven't read the novel, nor anything else by Koontz. Therefore, I cannot comment on how accurate and adaptation this is. I can, however, point out that this really is pretty standard fare, and at times, not even quite that. Let's get the couple of positives out of the way... while the editing and cinematography are average, there are a few cool shots. The mystery is fairly unexpected, and the plot twists are rather surprising. Pacing isn't too bad, and the 90 minutes don't feel as much longer than they are as you'd think. The reasons why this still sucks are plentiful... let's start with the characters. Can someone point me to where Hilary has any personality? Seriously, we're given zero reason to care about her, other than that she's the lead. It seems like she's arrogant, but even that isn't seen that often here. Sarandon is basically playing the exact same role as he did in Child's Play, the cop who's not sure what to believe. His partner is a despicable, intolerable jerk who spends the entirety of his screen-time being a misogynist(seriously, I haven't seen that much hatred towards the gender since Saving Silverman). I'm not sure there's a single likable human being, or one that the audience can relate to, in this whole thing, and most stand out only by the negative(and on notable occasions, downright sick and disgusting) traits. The music is unimpressive and not memorable. That goes for the dialog, as well. Development of any kind is handled in a lazy and careless way. This doesn't really build suspense, though it does try to. The trailer, the only special feature on the DVD, gives exceedingly big hints of what happens, and should probably not be viewed until after watching the movie. This has nudity, for the guys, infrequent, strong language, and some violence and disturbing content. I recommend it only to those with indiscriminate taste, or huge fans of those who had anything to do with making it. 5/10

The movie version of Whispers just does not do Dean Koontz' excellent novel justice, but it is still enjoyable and stuck fairly close to the original plotline created by Dean Koontz. The story is twisted and gruesome and has to do with a woman being stalked by a serial killer. Sounds simple, right? However the nasty, perverse elements of the story make this unique. This, again, was okay but if Koontz had scripted it would have been a lot better. The actress who played Hilary was about ten years too old for the part, had the wrong hair color (Hilary had long, black hair in the book) and I detected a faint British accent. Chris Sarandon was okay as Tony, nothing special, and the actor who played Bruno was very good, even though it wasn't how I imagined Bruno. I suggest that anyone who may be interested in seeing this, read the book first if you really want to. It's much better than the movie.

A terminally dull mystery-thriller, which may sound pretty sound theoretically but plays out very poorly. The ludicrous script is full of (MINOR SPOILER) people dying and then coming back to life when the plot requires them to, and the director doesn't seem able to work up any energy and suspense. The gooey sequence that kind of "explains" the film's title is the only halfway memorable one in this tiresome film. (*1/2)