“We’re not together,” Tom responds. “This is me asking you for help.”

Right now, Tom needs a lot of help. His own son, Jake (Acston Luca Porto), has been abducted by a ruthless serial killer known as the Whisper Man; Pete, a retired police detective, caught the killer more than a decade prior. Jake’s abduction is terrifying on its own terms, but it’s also complicated by a disturbing fact: The Whisper Man, otherwise known as Frank Carter, has been in prison since his capture. He can’t be the one committing these crimes … so who is? Pete is determined to find out, with the help of Detective Amanda Beck (Golden Globe nominee Michelle Monaghan).

The filmmakers tapped two-time Academy Award winner De Niro to play the grizzled police-force veteran. “He’s doing great work for an ingenue,” director James Ashcroft (Coming Home in the Dark) jokes. “Pete has such a quietness to him as a character, but there’s always a lot going on, and the wheels are always turning. He’s thinking about how to navigate this crime as a former detective, but also how to navigate this fractured relationship and build a relationship back with his son.”

That will be up to his son, brought to life by Golden Globe nominee Scott. “Adam Scott can do no wrong,” Ashcroft says. “He radiates a goodness and an intensity, especially as his character is put under so much pressure and duress with the situation with [his] son and his fractured relationship with [De Niro’s] character.”

Ashcroft knew as soon as he read North’s bestselling novel that this strained emotional dynamic was the heart of the otherwise spine-tingling story. “Despite the genre and the trappings of a serial killer thriller, it was the characters and the father-son relationship that’s mirrored throughout the story that really made me sink in,” he tells Tudum. “I think Alex does that incredibly well. It was irresistible.”

North wrote The Whisper Man when his own son was about Jake’s age; even as he spun a chilling tale of murder and mystery, the author kept coming back to the relationship between fathers and sons.

“As a parent, you worry about what you’re going to pass on to your kid,” North tells Tudum. “What gets passed on? What’s good? What’s bad? Everything is a reaction to what’s come before. How does that end up when people approach it in certain ways?”

You’ll have to see The Whisper Man to find out. The new film hits Netflix on Aug. 28.