The Nun director reveals the "three things" that drew him back to original horror with Whistle, as star explains how "fun" it was to play both hero and villain

Having made a name for himself helming The Hallow before being tasked with directing Warner Bros' big-budget The Conjuring spin-off The Nun, Corin Hardy says it was "exciting" returning to his original horror roots with new supernatural flick Whistle.

"It wasn't so much relief in that sense," the filmmaker tells GamesRadar+, when we ask whether it was refreshing to let loose creatively again, having previously worked on a franchise with an established tone and visual style. "I'm always up for original stories, and particularly ones with new mythologies like. There were three things that really stood out [with Whistle]. One was the mythology, which had a sort of a chill factor to it but also a deepness in terms of contemplating mortality and what your death would be.

"The other was this character-based love story that was emerging through the tragedy, and the other was the death sequences," Hardy added. "You know, what they would be… and how I'd get a chance to really create a variety of different deaths and in different ways that were all kind of tied into these individual characters."

Starring Yellowjackets' Sophie Nélisse and Deadpool and Wolverine's Dafne Keen, Whistle follows a group of high-school students who find themselves battling the Grim Reaper after one of them blows an Aztec death whistle. Turns out, the instrument doesn't "summon the dead", as their teacher Mr. Craven (Nick Frost), it summons "your" death... and it's bad news for anyone unlucky enough to hear its sound.

Unlike a lot of the scary movies released today, it's not a sequel or a remake, as writer Owen Egerton takes inspiration from his own short story of the same name. In it, Keen plays Chrys, the angsty new girl in town who's harboring a dark secret, while Nélisse plays Ellie, the sweet wannabe-doctor she strikes up a romance with. As their friends start being picked off one by one, the twosome must work together to try stop their fast-forwarded fates – presented as their gory, ghoulish doppelgangers – from catching up with them.

"It was fun," Nélisse says of the 8-week shoot. "Someone asked me earlier whether it was more fun to play the hero or the thing coming after the hero? Well, I technically got to play both!

"You root for these characters, so you want some of them to survive. But it is also fun to be bloodied up and covered in dirt and be wet and cold and on the freezing ground; having to contort my body," she continues. "I remember we put these contact lenses that made my eyes go white, but I couldn't see anything. So I was just, like, walking around on set having to be guided by everyone, because I was actually completely blind. Yeah, so I feel very lucky that I kind of got to play all these different spectrums of horror."

Whistle releases in US theaters on February 6, before landing in cinemas across the pond on February 13. For more, check out our guide to all the upcoming horror movies heading our way.