'Whispers' Season 1 Review: 'Rashomon' style story-telling of Saudi Arabian thriller will make you want more
Spoilers for 'Whispers' Season 1
Netflix's first Saudi Arabian licensed original is now available to stream on the platform. The eight-episode 'Whispers' features a predominantly Saudi Arabian and female cast and is helmed by the female director, Hana Alomair.
'Whispers' follows a family dealing with the death of the family patriarch, Hassan (Abdul Mohsen Alnimer). Just a few days before the launch of his new company's smart application, he dies in a car accident. Secrets about his mysterious past begin to surface and his wife, Amal, and their daughters, Wa'ad and Sawsan, will have to deal with the consequences while uncovering what really happened to Hassan.
Each episode of the first season covers more or less the same timeline but is told from multiple characters' perspectives — as such, viewers will also have to keep in mind that the characters could be unreliable narrators. The 'Rashomon'-style telling of Hassan's story from the women in his lives helps us see the character through their eyes — his wife, his sister, his colleague, his daughter, his step-daughter, and a few surprising characters.
In the first episode, we begin with Hassan's death and see the story from his widow, Amal's (Shaimaa Al Fadl) perspective. Amal is confused about Hassan's death, and soon she realizes that his accident may have been on purpose. She strongly suspects his sister, Lama (Elham Ali), and his colleague, Arwa (Mysoon Alruwaily).
We next see the story from Arwa's perspective, an ambitious woman who helped Hassan start a new business, which at the time of his death was working on an important application for the national development bank. We see that Arwa got resentful as she realized that Hassan kept considering the company as his, instead of theirs. To get what she's owed, she works with Lama.
It is Hassan's stepdaughter, Sawsan (Norah Al Anbar) we see next. Sawsan had learned that Hassan had stopped her real father from contacting her and the day before his accident, she had confronted him about it. Sawsan suspects her real father might have something to do with Hassan's death, but on working with Khaled (Ali Al Sharif), Hassan's colleague and her friend, she learns that Lama may, in fact, have more involvement.
Lama, on her part, was resentful when her brother got most of the inheritance from their father. When she learns about the application Hassan's company is working on, she gets to Arwa and plots to get what they believe is rightfully theirs from him. In this episode, we also learn that Hassan had a wife before Amal, a woman named Samar (Leila Arabi), who has a son by Hassan.
And so it goes for eight episodes which also covers the perspectives of Wa'ad (Nada Tawhid), Samar, and Khaled. In the end, we even get an episode from Hassan's perspective, learning what went down in the final days of his life. We won't spoil what comes in these episodes, but we would suggest that the best of the show comes after it passes it's halfway mark.
Through each of the episodes, we learn that all of the characters are hiding their own secrets. The direction of the series is heavily influenced by 'Rashomon', 'Memento', and even 'Following'. What you see only forms part of the story. There's a vital character that we just get to know more of as the season ends, and though Netflix shows us that 'Whispers' is a limited series, we hope there's more to come. After all, there are still unsolved mysteries and the ending scene of the finale proves that there is still more to Hassan's story.
'Whispers' is now streaming on Netflix.
