Crackling performances and a twisty plot that mixes melodrama with suspense recommend “The Whisper Man,” a new thriller based on an Alex North novel.

It’s “Silence of the Lambs” paying homage to “The Slender Man,” a tale of fathers and sons, missing children and a nursery-rhymed myth that’s all-too-real in this corner of North Jersey.

“If your window’s left unlatched, you’ll hear him tapping at the glass…”

“If you’re feeling sad and blue, The Whisper Man will come to you.”

Michelle Monaghan’s the efficient but seriously empathetic small city cop suddenly dealing with child abductions that mimic the crimes of a serial killer of decades before. “The Whisper Man” was caught, “doing life at Rahway (state prison).” So how could his crime spree be renewed?

The “hero cop” who caught him, “twenty, twenty-five years retired,” is played by Robert De Niro. He’s not able or necessarily willing to help. Until his grandson by his estranged, widowed novelist son (Adam Scott) is grabbed.

The clock is ticking on eight year-old Jake (Acston Luca Porto) as the police and the dad — unimpressed by lax policing and a lack of urgency in those in charge — chase clues and suspects, look at old files and ponder new clues.

If there’s an obvious gripe in this child-imperiled picture it’s the missing “clock” that should be ticking away, and the somewhat slack storytelling that New Zealand director James Ashcroft (“Coming Home in the Dark”) and his editor impose on it.

The frights come from violence that jolts as this sudden turn of events or that rash act blows up in our face. But a movie that should push its way from “routine procedural” to breathless desperation never gets up a head of steam.

We ponder who is little Jake’s imaginary friend in the blue sweater and if she is the one who talked him into letting this plastic-gloved stranger take him. And who is this “boy in the floor” the kid is obsessed with? Dad’s written off the kid’s mental struggles to the loss of his mother.

But De Niro’s retired Det. Pete Willis knew his quarry, Frank Carter, back then, and sees a new version of him now.

“Carter knew how to find the ones that wanted to die.”

Carter would prod kids into giving cassette tape “interviews,” blaming their parents for their current plight. The new killer does that, too, peppering the tapes with vintage pop by Tiffany and En Vogue.

But Carter’s in prison. We finally get to sample Michael Keaton‘s tasty turn as Beetlejuice on lots and lots of Xanax, his lines delivered in a growled whisper, his “friendly” greetings and turns of phrase not hiding his malice or vengeful head games. Making the man who caught him — who lost his family over the obsession with catching this killer and rescuing his final victim — question his sanity and his own innocence is just part of it.

“Men like you and I don’t have friends, Pete.”

Hamish Linklater makes a big impression as a chic, urbane and inhumane “collector” of serial killer artifacts. You can smell the creep’s obsession and question his “I would never hurt a child” protestations.

Monaghan lets us glimpse a little heartbreak as she deals with deaths, new and old — the corpses of children hidden, buried or just dumped. That’s contrasted with the lazy unconcern of the first cop we meet after Jake experiences a near miss, something that the movie should have made much more out of, given what we know about policing in America these days.

De Niro is walking gravitas and lends credibility to every scene. It’s great to see him in something decent for a change, swapping moments with a cast striving to be his equal. Keaton lets us imagine the deep preparation and carefully considered disarming-with-an-edge tone he chose to play their scenes with.

Scott also holds his own with Oscar-nobility-Bob. But he plays the only character who gets manic over the time-running-out on his little boy, and he alone can’t juice the urgency that this brooding thriller needs in between the shocks.

“The Whisper Man” is good enough to sink your teeth into. It’s just not the exceptional movie meal it might have been with this cast and these performances.

Rating: R, graphic violence, images of child corpses, profanity

Cast: Robert De Niro, Michelle Monaghan, Adam Scott, Hamish Linklater and Michael Keaton.

Credits: Directed by James Ashcroft, scripted by Chase Palmer, based on a novel by Alex North. A Netflix release. \

Running time: 1:51