At one time, serial killer thrillers were a pretty reliable box office draw, as films like The Bone Collector, Kiss the Girls, Taking Lives, and Murder by Numbers proved successful to various degrees. The genre even spawned a few undisputed classics like Se7en and The Silence of the Lambs. With its thrills that tiptoe the line between suspense and horror and its often credulity-straining twists, these stories remain popular with readers, though viewers are now more likely to find it unnecessarily padded out to fill 8-10 episodes of a limited streaming series than they are to see it in movie form. So it’s somewhat refreshing to see Netflix attempt to revive it with their adaptation of Alex North’s novel The Whisper Man.

After losing his wife to cancer, author Tom Kennedy (Adam Scott) moves with his son Jake (Acston Luca Porto) to her North Jersey hometown for a fresh(ish) start. Presumably unknown to him when he made this decision, a series of child abductions have been occurring that mirror those conducted by serial killer Frank Carter (Michael Keaton), who remains in prison after being caught by Tom’s estranged, ex-Detective father Peter Willis (Robert De Niro), who also still lives near their new home which would logically mean it is also Tom’s hometown, though this is never clearly mentioned.

While both are of course still struggling with their grief over their recent loss, Jake is taking it especially poorly, carrying a collection of his mother’s belongings with him wherever he goes and constantly talking to an imaginary friend. Tom finds his son’s behavior increasingly frustrating, which he does a poor job of concealing from the boy, leaving him susceptible to outside influence and therefore an easy mark for whoever is abducting and murdering area children. And so out the door Jake goes.

Frustrated by the perfectly competent job detective Amanda Beck (Michelle Monaghan) is doing trying to solve the case, Tom reaches out to his father who is initially reluctant to get involved, but ultimately relents to try and save his grandson.

I’ve never read North’s novel, so I can’t say how closely Chase Palmer (It) and Ben Jacoby’s (The First Omen) script hews to it, but the plot mostly feels like an amalgamation of story beats and tropes lifted from other, better movies. Director James Ashcroft (The Rule of Jenny Pen) certainly knows how to build suspense, staging a couple of effectively chilling scenes, but he can only do so much with the material. Likewise, most of the impressive cast fully commit, with Keaton in particular making the most of his wannabe-Hannibal Lector role, but as with much of his recent work DeNiro appears to only be here for the paycheck.

The Whisper Man is never going to be thought back on as a classic, if it is thought back on at all, but it is a competently made and consistently engaging little thriller. Little of what happens will surprise fans of the genre, regardless of how they typically consume it, but its very existence is so nostalgically pleasant, harkening back to a time when a greater variety of films could be successful at the box office, that it’s hard not to enjoy. Plus, it’s nice to experience this kind of story without several episodes of wheel-spinning crammed in the middle for a change. ★★★

Rated R for some bloody violence, disturbing images, suicide, language, and brief sexual references.