Back in 2023, Brian Duffield (No One Will Save You) turned a nearly wordless Kaitlyn Dever (Booksmart), a lonely house, and some of the best sound design of that year into one of my favorite surprises, and his name has been on my radar ever since. Before that, he co-wrote Underwater, a January release I went into with strangely high hopes and came out of genuinely impressed. I’ll admit it: put someone in a claustrophobic place at the bottom of the ocean, and I’m already halfway in. Whalefall puts its protagonist somewhere I never really thought live-action could pull off like it does.
The cast had my attention too. Austin Abrams (Resident Evil) has gone from supporting scene-stealer to leading man in two movies of his own, and both have worked for me. Josh Brolin (Sicario) playing a hard father is about as reliable as casting gets at this point. I genuinely can’t think of a film where he wasn’t good.
Somewhere off California’s central coast lie the remains of Mitt Gardiner (Brolin), an ocean-obsessed diver who raised his son with far more rules than warmth. After Mitt’s death, Jay (Abrams) goes down alone to find him, leaving behind a mother, Zara (Elisabeth Shue, Leaving Las Vegas), and two sisters, Eva (Jane Levy, Don’t Breathe) and Nan (Emily Rudd, Fear Street: 1978). Then the dive goes wrong in the most absurd way imaginable. An 80-foot sperm whale swallows Jay whole, leaving him inside its stomach with about an hour of air in his tank. His only real tools are the survival lessons his father drilled into him.
Let’s get this out of the way. Nothing about Whalefall is plausible, and it gets crazier the longer it goes. Duffield knows that and commits to it anyway, every single minute, without ever winking at the audience. The situations escalate and keep escalating, and the whole thing is so compelling, both as a story and as pure survival thriller, that I couldn’t care less about the voice in the back of my head going, “well, he should have died ages ago.”
A big part of why I bought into it is that the inside of this whale feels like a real place. The interior was built practically, and you feel it in every shot. The walls actually press against Abrams, there’s nowhere to stand up straight, and there’s nowhere to look that isn’t flesh. It’s pure claustrophobia with some incredibly tense, nail-biting stretches. The underwater sets, with Wētā Workshop involved, could only be magnificent. There’s also body horror and gross imagery to spare, so the squeamish should know what they’re signing up for. The swallowing sequence itself was released almost in full as a trailer, so a lot of people already know how good it is. On a big screen, it’s even more intense.
Abrams spends most of Whalefall alone, with half his face hidden behind diving gear, and he still carries all of it. This is a straight dramatic role with barely a joke to lean on, and the actor proves he can handle something this heavy. He just keeps getting better with every film, this has been his year, no question.
Brolin, as expected, perfectly embodies Mitt: a strong, strict, and rigorous father who teaches by demanding instead of comforting. The relationship around him is where things get shakier. The father-son dynamic isn’t nearly as strong as the movie wants it to be, and the flashbacks meant to build it don’t help as much as they should. Mitt is outright mean in many moments, and he never really gets proper redemption, so it becomes harder to care about him or the relationship with his son. I don’t need every difficult parent on screen to be redeemed, but Whalefall clearly wants Jay to make peace with his father, and the road it takes to get there didn’t quite convince me.
Visually, the best thing in the film is a sequence where a pod of killer whales attacks the whale that swallowed Jay. It’s gorgeous and devastating at the same time. The sperm whale glows white against the pitch-black water, sonar flashes cut through the darkness, and the attack is vicious. Then the sequence goes somewhere I didn’t expect, and it only gets more captivating from there. It’s visually unique and absolutely riveting, the kind of set piece I’ll remember long after I’ve forgotten most of the plot.
That stretch is also where the sound design peaks, though it deserves praise across the entire runtime. Every groan of the whale’s body, every muffled breath inside Jay’s mask, every distant click in the water is doing work. If you can, see it somewhere with a proper sound system.
Whalefall is also a sincere movie, and I appreciated that. It’s earnest about grief, and for most of its runtime, I never felt it was being sentimental just for the sake of it. Sure, it tries to do a bit too much, and there’s some over-explaining here and there, in addition to the survival and grief storylines not always meshing well together. Sometimes I was holding my breath with Jay, and a moment later the film was spelling out what a memory meant.
The third act is where that ambition gets the better of it. Whalefall becomes illusion-heavy and vision-heavy, a bit too spiritual, noticeably more sentimental, and much less of a survival flick. Those visions also become the main reason Jay forgives his father, and a hallucination brought on by being trapped inside a whale felt like a silly reason to forgive someone who was that hard on you. Some of it is just heavy-handed. The strange part is that the commitment I praised earlier is what hurts it here. A script that refuses to laugh at its own premise is great while a whale is slowly digesting the protagonist. Once the movie starts reaching for catharsis, it takes that silly premise a bit too seriously. I’m still not sure whether a lighter touch would have broken the spell or saved the ending.
Final Thoughts on Whalefall
Whalefall takes an insane premise, keeps making it crazier, and never stops committing to it. The practical whale interior is genuinely claustrophobic, the underwater sets are magnificent, the body horror is plentiful, and the sound design is excellent from start to finish. Austin Abrams proves he can carry a heavy dramatic role with barely any comedy, and Josh Brolin is as good as ever as a strict, rigorous father. The father-son relationship isn’t as strong as the film thinks it is, though. Mitt never earns his redemption, the flashbacks and over-explaining don’t help, and the vision-filled third act trades survival for spirituality and sentiment. I still enjoyed it, and I’d happily go back, even if just to see that killer whale sequence on the big screen again.
Rating: B
Whalefall releases in theaters on October 16th.
Learn more about the film, including how to watch it, at the official website for the title.
You might also like…
