Whistle director explains the film's surprisingly sweet ending

Before we delve into the specifics, you should be warned that this article contains major spoilers for Whistle. Written by Owen Egerton, the film follows a group of high-school students who find themselves outrunning Death 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) claimed, it summons "your" death. As friends meet their end in increasingly gruesome ways — Chrys' cousin Rel (Sky Yang) is ground-up by an invisible piece of machinery as his future factory accident catches up to him — Ellie and Chrys hatch a Flatliners-style plan to "die" and be resuscitated.

Things go wrong when local drug dealer Noah (Percy Hynes White) shoots Ellie before she can bring Chrys back. Chrys manages to fight her demonic self and wake up, while Noah unknowingly stands in Ellie's blood and marks himself as her sacrifice; the ghoul then turns its attention to him and Ellie and Chrys live to tell the tale.