By John Corrado
Sometimes a basic premise is all you need to sell a movie. Such is the case with Whalefall, which follows a young diver who gets swallowed by a whale, and has to survive inside of the creature as his oxygen runs out.
But it’s what director Brian Duffield (No One Will Save You, Spontaneous) does around this premise that elevates Whalefall beyond just being a B-movie creature feature, though it offers a bit of that as well.
Adapted from a novel by Daniel Kraus, who co-wrote the screenplay with Duffield, Whalefall takes the potentially goofy premise of a scuba diver trying to survive after getting swallowed by a whale, and spins it into a surprisingly emotional father-son story about grief.
The young scuba diver is Jay Gardiner (Austin Abrams), who has just lost his father Mitt (Josh Brolin) to the ocean. When diving to recover his father’s remains, he gets swallowed up by a sperm whale, and has to figure out how to survive from within with only about an hour of oxygen left in the tank. Yes, a good chunk of Whalefall takes place in the whale, with the midsection almost unfolding in real time.
At a relatively tight 106 minutes, Duffield does a good job of balancing the suspenseful underwater scenes with flashbacks, fleshing out the complicated relationship that Jay had with his father. Brolin is very good in this scenes, playing the gruff, sometimes drunk father character who doesn’t really know how to bond with his son beyond taking the tough love approach.
It also really can’t be understated the degree to which Abrams, who had a breakout role in last year’s Weapons and is currently the star of Resident Evil, elevates and sells this whole movie. Abrams is alone on screen for long stretches of the running time, the camera often on his face in tight closeups as he not only has to play the survival thriller elements but his character’s emotional arc as well, and he is compelling to watch. The cast is rounded out by Elisabeth Shue as his mother, Jane Levy and Emily Rudd as his two older sisters, and John Ortiz as an old friend of his father’s. These are all very much supporting roles, but they do all help flesh out this world.
Duffield’s film works on a base level as a movie about a guy getting swallowed by a sperm whale, and delivers all of the grossness and claustrophobia that premise suggests, as Jay has to swim through stomach acid and attempt climbing the whale’s throat. It’s not for the easily squeamish, and the visual effects are both credible and impressive at making us feel like we are inside this whale’s interior chambers.
But, at its heart, Whalefall is about the complex, confusing process of grieving someone when you had a complicated relationship with them, a story that is allowed to play out in a surprisingly tender way. This balance between the survival thriller elements, and the film’s heart-on-sleeve, character-driven emotional heft, is what makes Whallefall a worthwhile cinematic experience.
Film Rating: ★★★ (out of 4)
