Dafne Keen Faces Death in New Trailer for Horror Movie ‘Whistle’

Dafne Keen, the actor best known for her role as X-23 in Logan and the MCU’s Deadpool & Wolverine, will face a deadly curse in the upcoming film, Whistle. We’re getting an early look at the scary supernatural horror thriller, and judging from the recently released trailer (which you can watch below), Whistle could be one of the year’s game-changers in the genre.

Whistle is one of 2026’s highly anticipated horror movies, and the terrifying recent trailer will have horror fans buzzing with excitement. The film was long delayed before IFC and Shudder acquired it, and, surprisingly, it wasn’t sent directly to streaming. Whistle will land in theaters in February, when it will compete against horror contenders Dracula (the French version directed by Luc Besson) and the sequel The Strangers – Chapter 3.

The trailer shows Keen and a group of friends finding a cursed artifact and doing what horror characters should never do with mysterious objects. After playing around with it, they discover it’s a whistle that summons… something sinister. The official logline reads as follows:

A misfit group of unwitting high school students stumble upon a cursed object, an ancient Aztec Death Whistle. They discover that blowing the whistle and the terrifying sound it emits will summon their future deaths to hunt them down. As the body count rises, the friends investigate the origins of the deadly artifact in a desperate effort to stop the horrifying chain of events that they have set in motion.

‘Whistle’: Release Date, Cast, and Everything We Know, So Far

Whistle premieres in theaters on February 6, 2026, after spending some time stuck in “theatrical release hell.” After production wrapped in early 2024, its release was delayed until it was acquired by Independent Film Company and Shudder in 2025. There were some screenings in 2025’s edition of Fantastic Fest, but it was ultimately pushed to the first quarter of 2026.

The film was written by Owen Egerton, who adapted his own story for the big screen, and directed by Corin Hardy. Hardy is mostly known for 2015’s The Hallow, and the 2018 Conjuring universe spin-off The Nun. Joining Keen are Sky Yang, Sophie Nélisse, Michelle Fairley, Jhaleil Swaby, Ali Skovbye, Percy Hynes White, and Nick Frost. The film is a Canadian-Irish production by production companies No Trace Camping and Wild Atlantic Pictures.

When landing the distribution deal that would see the film land in theaters, Hardy expressed his excitement, saying:

“Whistle is made with the same heart-on-sleeve, disenfranchised-teen-spirit found in my favorite genre movies that I grew up watching. I was drawn to the mysterious mythology surrounding the Death Whistle and how it presented me with the opportunity to create a variety of cinematic, imaginative and terrifying deaths. This film is built for the big screen experience, so I can’t wait for audiences to blow the whistle with IFC and Shudder in cinemas!”

Keen also talked about landing the role in the film, and she said this to ComicBook:

“Honestly, I did the most stupidest thing I’ve ever done, which is I landed from the U.K., I was so jet-lagged, and I was like, ‘I’m gonna brave through the day and make it so I can sleep at night. And I researched the death whistle, and I was like, ‘This is terrifying.’ I did research it a little bit. I think there’s misconceptions about it. I think certain things I read were quite positive. It was a kind of peaceful way to summon the end. And then other ones were horrific. Like, legitimately, like the movie.”