The Whisper Man actually explains how Jake and Tom ended up in *that* house

*Warning: Spoilers ahead for The Whisper Man*

If you haven’t read The Whisper Man but you’ve watched the Netflix movie, there’s a chance you’ll have a lingering question: how the hell did Tom and Jake just so happen to move into the house where two bodies were buried?

It’s a very fair question, and doesn’t appear to have been explained very well in the film. If you recall, Tom (Adam Scott) and his son Jake (Acston Luca Porto) move to the town of Garretton following the death of Tom’s wife and Jake’s mum Rebecca.

It’s where Rebecca grew up and the pair need a fresh start, so that part all makes sense. But then out of every possible house in Garretton, they somehow end up renting the exact property where Frank Carter’s (Michael Keaton) final missing victim, Tony Smith, has been buried for decades.

Oh, and former tenant Dominic Barnett, Frank’s old accomplice, is dead inside the basement wall. He was actually put there by true crime obsessive Norman Collins (Hamish Linklater), who breaks into the house shortly after Jake and Tom move in. 

And Norman happens to be the man who connects Frank with his estranged son Francis (Owen Teague), aka the new serial killer who ends up kidnapping Jake earlier on in the film. 

You’ve got to admit – that’s a helluva coincidence that they chose that place. 

Aside from the town itself, it appears the only proper explanation we get in the film is that it has a swing. As Tom tells Jake at the start, “It’s just like the one you guys loved at the shore.”

A number of viewers were confused by this, with one writing on Reddit, “How did Tom and Jake magically move into the house with Tony Smith’s body in the basement!!!!??!???”

“Plot geography, it’s like plot armor except the story needs the protagonist to be in a specific spot,” another replied, while a third added, “That alone made me almost turn it off.”

But fret not, as there is an explanation thanks to Netflix and Alex North’s The Whisper Man novel. 

Turns out, it’s not just a big coincidence

Firstly, in Netflix’s breakdown of the ending, it said, “There’s always been something off about the house that Jake himself picked – with the help of his mysterious imaginary friend, a young girl.”

The fact that the bodies were buried there is something Robert De Niro, who plays Tom’s dad Peter in the film, reflected on. “Is it a coincidence?” he asked. “We’re not sure, because Jake liked the house, wanted to move there. Tom is following Jake’s lead.”

The Whisper Man book, published in 2019, also clears things up. Earlier on in the novel, Jake talks with his imaginary friend – the girl in the blue sweater (in this case, the blue-and-white-checked dress) – about the move. 

After she smiles at one of his drawings, we get our first clue that Jake was actually the one who found the new house.

“Jake wondered about the smile. It was a strange one, as though she was happy but also sad about something. Come to think of it, that was how he felt about moving too,” North writes.  

“He didn’t like it in the house any more, and he knew it was making Daddy miserable too, but moving still felt like something they maybe shouldn’t do, even though he was the one who’d spotted the new house on Daddy’s iPad when they were looking together.”

We later find out why he chose that house in particular. Much like the film, Tom finds an old photo of his late wife as a child in Jake’s “packet of special things”, and he realises that his imaginary friend was his mother all along. 

Whether she’s a ghost or a figment of Jake’s imagination is deliberately left ambiguous. As The Whisper Man director James Ashcroft told Netflix, “The imaginary friend has to work both as possible psychosis and/or possible supernatural intervention. 

“I believe that it can be held both psychologically and supernaturally. And you can choose whether you think one way or the other or both.”

But back to the book. When Tom looks through the photos and realises Rebecca attended the same school Jake ends up at, we’re told: “I thought about how focused Jake had been on our new house when he’d seen it on my iPad – how all the others in the search results had become invisible to him after viewing the photographs of it online. 

“It couldn’t be a coincidence. I quickly flicked through the other photographs that he had kept. Most were snaps that had been taken on holiday, but a few of the locations were more familiar… And then our house. 

“The sight of it was as incongruous as the school photograph had been. Rebecca in a place where she simply shouldn’t and couldn’t be. Here, she was standing on the pavement outside our new home, one foot placed backwards on the driveway…

“That was why the house had leapt out at Jake when he had seen it. Because he’d seen it before, with his mother standing in front of it.”

So there you have it – Jake knew about the house because of the photo. Whether there was an additional spiritual push from the ghost of his late mother is, as said, for you to decide. 

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Featured image credit: Netflix