Jill Roperson (Melissa Joan Hart) joins her cousin Patti McMullen on a trip to an island village to see a guy Kevin Watson. Patti's purse almost gets snatched. Kevin takes Patti to see Dr. Faye Croft. Both Jill and Patti have especially strong genes. Jill falls for artist Chris Hammett. Patti is gone and Jill is told that she has left the island. There is a secret evil on the island and the villagers are keeping a horrific secret.

This is a Lifetime mystery but it should try more for a horror feel. It looks cheap and is a lesser TV production. The teases get a bit repetitive and tiresome. There is no tension. Melissa Joan Hart does her best but this is, at best, a second-tier Twilight Zone episode. This should simply be Patti missing with Kevin as the prime suspect for the first half. There should be no teases of the central secret at least until the midpoint.

Canadian films can, infrequently, be great. Not so with this turkey. This ranks among the worst that I have ever seen.

Two cousins visit an island off the coast of Oregon. One of them disappears after being injured in an attempted purse snatching. She is taken to the local doctor by an island gentleman/suitor who just "happens" along. The heroine, who shares the same heightened immune system as her cousin, revealed to us by the presence of a birthmark they have in common, spends the duration of the film searching for her missing cousin while receiving no assistance and a lot of unexplainable grief from the local lawman who gives a great impression of a mannequin though not quite as animated. Preposterous events follow one after another. Perhaps the worst performance is rendered by the "troubled" daughter of the local lady doctor dressed in the mandatory full goth. People appear of out nowhere adding nothing to the "suspense" or the plot. Did I say plot? Oh yes. The cherry on the cake is a blood drained corpse with rosy cheeks.

It's the kind of film that you keep watching in hope that you might find some redeeming feature. Fageddaboudit! How do they get funding for such embarrassing trash? Let me guess. Could it be from the Canadian taxpayer?

"Whispers and Lies" is set on the idyllic Pine Cove Island, where Jill Roperson and her cousin Patti McMullen arrive for a vacation. But their trip soon turns into a nightmare with a bizarre set of characters enveloping them in their creepy community.

At the heart of the mystery is a diabolical doctor named Faye Croft. Dr. Croft is clearly keeping an eye on Patti who has a strong immune system. Her unique birthmark denotes that something special is in Patti's blood.

When Patti disappears, Jill begins the frantic search for her cousin. She is linked up with a local painter named Chris Hammett, who has a bad cough. There is a bit of a romantic connection between Jill and Coughing Chris. But Chris comes to Jill's assistance more significantly in a pure struggle for survival.

Other memorable characters include the paranoid Eugene Fritts, who lives in the forest. Jill discovers a photo from the nineteenth century that is a dead ringer for Eugene. Camille is a sixteen-year-old, who is the town gadfly. But it turns out that Camille is not "sweet sixteen," but 145 years old! The creatures of Pine Cove appear to be frozen in time.

The film struggles in developing a yarn about the fountain of youth delivered in a vaccine concocted by Dr. Faye and drawn from the blood of the elect. Jill attempts to educate the community with the admonition, "Do the best you can with the time you have left." Like Ponce de Leon, the residents' search for the fountain of youth was an illusion. Human life is finite, a realization that slowly comes to Coughing Chris and the mad scientist Dr. Faye.