The Mr. Whispers trailer, introducing a new British horror picture produced under the banner of The B-Team, has received its first public showing through the American horror publication Dread Central.

Mr Matt Konopka, writing for Dread Central on 6 October, drew attention to the picture’s lo-fi character, a description particularly suitable to a production whose visual design derives in considerable measure from the imperfections of domestic video equipment.

Mr. Whispers is the first feature-length production to emerge from The B-Team, an experimental company within British Horror Studio, established to afford emerging directors, writers and performers an opportunity to undertake films of their own upon a comparatively modest scale.

The story is set in the latter years of the nineteen-nineties and follows a small company of documentary-makers investigating the disappearance of a number of local children several decades earlier. Their enquiries bring them to a disused cinema connected with the case.

There they discover that the disappearances appear also to bear some obscure relation to an old children’s cartoon and, more particularly, to the strange porcelain-faced figure who appeared in it. The figure’s name is Mr. Whispers.

Having entered the building in pursuit of their story, the young investigators resolve to remain there during the night. It is a decision which they are unlikely to remember with satisfaction.

An Imperfect Image

The debt owed by Mr. Whispers to The Blair Witch Project is not concealed.

That celebrated American picture demonstrated, more effectively than most of its imitators, that the technical inadequacy of an image might itself be put to dramatic use. A camera unable properly to penetrate darkness does not merely conceal information; it obliges the spectator to search an uncertain image for dangers which may or may not be present.

Mr. Whispers appears to proceed upon a similar understanding.

Its setting permits the filmmakers to employ the defects of late twentieth-century consumer video as part of the picture’s design. Poor illumination, damaged recordings, indistinct forms and uncertain focus are not treated as inconveniences to be overcome, but as useful means by which the spectator may be denied certainty.

There is inevitably an element of nostalgia in such an undertaking, although the nostalgia exhibited here appears to be of a distinctly uneasy kind.

Children’s entertainment is particularly susceptible to this alteration of mood. A character devised to reassure or amuse may assume a remarkably sinister aspect when encountered years later, removed from its original surroundings and preserved imperfectly upon an old recording.

It is from this contradiction that the filmmakers appear to have fashioned the legend of Mr. Whispers.

The First B-Team Feature

The picture is directed by Mr Dorian Todd, Mr Oliver Revie and Mr Seumas MacNeil, from a screenplay by Messrs Todd and MacNeil.

Miss Megan Tremethick appears in the principal role of Kathryn. She is joined by Messrs Dorian Todd, Novarro Ramon and Sam McMillan, while Mr Stephen Corrall also has a part.

Several members of the company will already be known to those who follow independent British horror. Messrs Todd, Ramon and McMillan are also to be seen in Black Chariot, the supernatural noir whose trailer was recently reported upon in these pages.

Miss Tremethick has become an increasingly prominent member of the British Horror Studio company, both as an actress and, with Spoiling You, as a director in her own right.

Her presence in Mr. Whispers is of some interest. Miss Tremethick possesses a distinctly classical appearance and manner before the camera, qualities which suggest an older tradition of British screen acting rather more readily than the studied informality customarily demanded by found-footage pictures.

The contrast between that quality and the degraded appearance of amateur video is an unusual one, and offers a point of interest in the new production.

The B-Team occupies a particular position within British Horror Studio. It operates alongside Hex Studios and Amicus Productions, but is intended to permit more experimental productions by emerging filmmakers working within the wider organisation.

The appearance of Mr. Whispers supplies the first substantial evidence of the kind of picture which this arrangement is intended to encourage.

A Picture-House Story Returns to the Picture House

There is a pleasing propriety in the circumstance that a horror story concerning an abandoned cinema is shortly to be exhibited in cinemas itself.

The picture house has previously proved a profitable setting for horror. Mr Lamberto Bava’s Demons, made in 1985, famously turned an ordinary cinema performance into a place of confinement and considerable disorder.

Mr. Whispers is plainly a production of another temperament. Where Mr Bava employed colour, violence and spectacle, the newer picture appears to rely upon empty passages, uncertain recordings, poor light and the suspicion that something has been observed without ever having been properly seen.

The comparison is nevertheless worth making, since both pictures depend upon a quality peculiar to the cinema: an audience enters a darkened building and willingly places its attention in the hands of images appearing upon a screen.

In Mr. Whispers, the relationship between recorded image and spectator appears to have been made part of the horror itself. The public will shortly have an opportunity to judge the result.

Theatrical Engagements

Mr. Whispers forms part of the first programme being distributed by BHS Picture House, the theatrical distribution arm of British Horror Studio. The Chronicle has previously examined the establishment of the Picture House programme and the return of Amicus Productions to British cinema screens.

Lumière Cinema — Romford

23–29 October 2026. These dates were announced in Dread Central’s trailer report. Consult Lumière Cinema’s programme for performance times and booking information. The Chronicle has also reported upon the recent reprieve for the cinema.

Peckhamplex — London

Tuesday 24 November 2026, at 8.30 p.m. View the Mr. Whispers screening and book at Peckhamplex.

Further Engagements

Dread Central also reports planned performances at Southport Bijou Cinema and the Adam Smith Theatre, Kirkcaldy. Dates for these engagements remain to be announced. Readers should consult the exhibitors and BHS Picture House for confirmed listings before travelling.

The remaining pictures in the first BHS Picture House programme include Amicus Productions’ In the Grip of Terror, Hex Studios’ Black Chariot, and Spoiling You, directed by Miss Tremethick.

The presentation of Mr. Whispers by Dread Central affords the picture a substantial introduction to an audience beyond that already acquainted with the studio’s work.

Whether its deliberately imperfect images can retain upon a large cinema screen the peculiar uneasiness of an old videotape discovered in circumstances where one would rather not have discovered it remains to be seen.

For a story concerning young people who enter a darkened picture house in search of something which might more wisely have been left alone, the cinema itself would seem a singularly appropriate place in which to discover the answer.

Our sister publication, Amicus Horror, also reports on the Mr Whispers trailer and its Dread Central unveiling.

Robert Guthrie is the British Horror Chronicle’s Arts Correspondent.