HorRHIFFic 2025: ‘The Whisper Within the Woods’ Review

Stars: Katie Ford, Will Conway, Nick Field, Tim Cummins, Alfie Waters, Lyla Tolan, Gerry Conway | Written by Gary Redwin | Directed by Mark Adlington

The Whisper Within the Woods is the feature debut of director Mark Adlington and screenwriter Gary Redwin. It was filmed on what looks to be a super-low budget, which unfortunately shows through every frame of the film. That’s a shame, as the film has a decent idea at its core – if not a NEW idea.

Opening with a pre-credits sequence, The Whisper Within the Woods follows two school kids, brother and sister Sarah and Daniel who, after reading a story about a local witch in the woods head off to see if they can uncover the truth. But there’s a problem. Two local knife-wielding bullies are looking for them too, finding them on the woodland path and threatening to cut them. What follows is either a supernatural occurrence or the result of a twisted, fragile child’s mind… Whatever the reason, only Sarah and Daniel come out of the woods alive!

Skip forward 12 years and, as revealed to her now-husband after an expose on the crime airs on TV, Sarah now goes by the name of Sam, given a new identity after being found guilty of the crime of murdering the two bullies. She’s put everything behind her, until her new normalcy is disrupted after the TV expose reignites her deep-seated fears and when she feels haunted by sinister, malevolent, forces. As this malevolent entity encroaches on her new life, and in particular her stepson, Sam is compelled to confront the mysteries that marred her childhood and seek a resolution – whether it results in supernatural forces being the truth or her own fractured psyche.

Despite a terrible pre-credits sequence, which I put down to working with child actors, Mark Adlington’s direction turns out to be both nuanced and deliberate, building some decent tension at times and delivering some great jump scares on the aforementioned low-budget. He also manages to elicit strong performances from the cast – which consists mainly of performers making their feature debut, in fact, this is the ONLY credit for lead actors Katie Ford and Will Conway, who play the elder Sarah and Daniel respectively, on IMDb. Mark Adlington also imbues the film with an overarching sense of dread, backed up by a simple – but effective – score by Paul Finney, again another first-timer to filmmaking.

Overall the cast delivers OK performances, with varying degrees of success. The kids early doors delivering some of the most stilted dialogue reads I think I’ve seen outside of Birdemic or The Room. However once in the “present day” the performances do improve, with Katie Ford portraying her character with just the right amount of vulnerability, and later determination, for the audience to empathise with her situation. The supporting cast does the best with what they have, again to varying degrees of success. Thankfully the chemistry among some of the actors, in particular the leads, pastes over some of the cracks in the performances.

However for all that, the financial constraints of filming on such a low-budget means that The Whisper Within the Woods, despite all its positives, still feels like something of a misfire. Some of the performances are jarring, taking you out of the film; whilst the score, oftentimes used perfectly to ramp up the tension does feel at other times completely overwrought. Then there’s the look of the film – a dull, grey pallet – that could have done with some colour grading to give the overall appearance some sense of contrast at least. And the script, by newcomer Gary Redwin, feels forced at times, with nothing new up its sleeve beyond some overused genre cliches and even the film’s “twist” is, unfortunately, notably predictable.

** 2/5

The Whisper Within the Woods screened as part of this year’s Romford Horror Film Festival on Thursday, February 27th.