If you watched The Whisper Man on Netflix this weekend—a new thriller movie starring Adam Scott and Robert De Niro—then you already know is movie is bleak, gray, and grim.

Directed by James Ashcroft, with a script written by Ben Jacoby and Chase Palmer, The Whisper Man is based on Alex North’s 2019 bestselling crime novel of the same name. Adam Scott stars as Tom Kennedy, a crime novelist whose detective skills are put to the test when his son, Jake (Acston Luca Porto), is abducted. When details from the kidnapping appear to echo that of a serial killer who was locked up by Tom’s estranged father—a retired cop played by Robert De Niro—father and son must put aside their grievances to work together.

The Whisper Man location had to match the movie’s dark tone. Perhaps that’s why the production opted to head to New Jersey to film on location. Read on to learn more about The Whisper Man movie filming locations in New Jersey.

Where does The Whisper Man movie take place?

The Whisper Man movie takes place in the fictional town of Garretton, New Jersey. Garretton is not a real place, and was created using a few different New Jersey locations and sets.

Where was The Whisper Man movie filmed?

The Whisper Man movie was filmed on location in New Jersey, as well on film sets in studio.

In a recent interview with Decider, The Whisper Man director James Ashcroft, who is from New Zealand, said this was his first time in the Garden State.

“I really loved getting to know New Jersey as a state. Logistically, some days it could be quite a tough ask, because we really were jumping all around the place in New Jersey,” Ashcroft said. “But I love shooting on location. We shot some amazing stuff on set, as well in the studio.”

The big old house that Tom and his son Jake moved to was filmed at a real house located in Plainfield, a city in Central New Jersey.

“Tom’s house—that, in particular, was like a museum,” Ashcroft told Decider. “The house was well over 100 years old, and had its own history and idiosyncrasy. So it felt like another character. The owner [of that house] had a very, very rich history.”

According to a report from NJBIZ, the Plainfield house was used both for exteriors and interior, though the scenes that take place in the basement were filmed on a custom-built set.

For the house of Tom’s father, Pete (Robert De Niro), the production used a home in Scotch Plains, a small town in North Central Jersey.

The scene where Tom first reunites with his father at a diner was filmed at Westwood Diner Pancake House in Westwood. The exterior for the scenes where De Niro and Michelle Monaghan visit Frank Carter (Michael Keaton) in prison—which is called Rahway Prison in the movie, in reference to the facility’s old name— were filmed around the East Jersey State Prison, in Woodbridge Township, New Jersey. The interiors for the prison scenes were filmed at Hudson County Corrections and Rehabilitation Center in Kearny.

Jake’s elementary school was filmed at Wilson Elementary School in Westfield, and the scenes at the police station were filmed at the former United Way building in Montclair, now home to the nonprofit Family Promise of Essex County.

Other New Jersey filming locations, according to NJBIZ, included Union, Bergen, Passaic, Hudson, Essex, Middlesex and Somerset counties; as well as the Houdaille Quarry in Springfield and Branch Brook Park in Newark.