Whalefall might have bursts of enjoyment for the right person, but restrictive visuals, dull characters and a laboured premise undermine its aspirations.
Movies like Whalefall are arguably invincible to us snooty critics. Its central conceit is preposterous, and you either vibe with it or you don’t. The right person can find popcorn entertainment, but sadly this critic isn’t one of them. Where other survival films can reach dark or nail-biting heights with their setups, Whalefall is more bizarre than exciting.
When executed well, survival pictures can be raw odes to resilience and life. Take 127 Hours, which meticulously used its premise to champion second chances. Rather than being trapped by a boulder, the protagonist of Whalefall, a scuba diver named Jay (Austin Abrams), finds himself swallowed whole by a sperm whale. Being stuck inside a whale is a grim thought – and allegedly occurred to one James Bartley in the 1890s. But when you find yourself questioning the practicality rather than embracing the terror of the setpieces, you know the gimmick isn’t working.
Take a scene where Jay wades through the whale’s stomach acid. His hands get severely burned (he forgot to pack his gloves), yet his torso, legs, and the wetsuit covering them all escape without so much as a singe. Jay’s already had stupendous luck (or unluck?) by getting down this behemoth’s gullet without being pulverised, and now here he is demonstrating selective immunity. This is not to mention how unusually considerate this whale is being. Sperm whales are the third-deepest-diving mammals on Earth, but this one stays mostly within the ocean’s epipelagic zone, preventing Jay from dying from extreme pressure. Whalefall seems to run on contrivances, with the image of Jay screaming for help from behind the whale’s tongue evoking bemusement rather than chills.
Pedantry aside, this setup has potential, right down to being adapted from a successful book of the same name by Daniel Kraus (who also co-wrote this screenplay). Like other survival stories, it’s ultimately about how one reflects on life when faced with death, thus encouraging them to fight for life again. Yet while the written word in a novel gives our imaginations free rein, the claustrophobic setting and concept hinder the artistry of this audiovisual medium. Where limited options have brought out the best in other movies, the opposite effect occurs here. Even the inclusion of a giant squid that’s just as, if not more, responsible for Jay’s situation than the sperm whale suggests that they had to stretch this premise pretty far to make it work.
Close-ups and tight camerawork swirl inside this whale’s belly, trapping us next to Jay in these extreme confines. Revolting, albeit impressive, production design and practical effects bring this horrifying space to life, leaving us trapped alongside Jay as he fights to escape by any desperate means available. The sound mixing intensifies these feelings of imminent death, the whale calls sounding terrifying rather than serene. But the filmmaking lacks variety in portraying this scary spectacle, the dark blue lighting and occasional CGI often obscuring what’s happening on screen. Even outside the whale’s belly, the ocean’s murky lighting comes across as saturated rather than picturesque or ominous. The creativity feels as trapped in this space as the protagonist, and the choice to cut back to flashbacks between failed escape attempts reads as an attempt to circumvent these restrictions.
Jay didn’t end up inside this whale randomly. His father, Mitt (Josh Brolin), was a stern man who loved boating and the sea. He even taught Jay how to scuba dive, but was so harsh on him, belittling him for his weak lungs, that the two maintained a strained relationship. In the film’s opening scene, Mitt takes his own life by drowning, leaving Jay, his mother and his sisters (who aren’t verbally named as far as this critic can recall) devastated. Because his body was never recovered from the sea, Jay is diving into the water in a hopeless effort to find Mitt’s remains.
This is meant to be the film’s emotional core: the inner turmoil Jay must overcome as he puts Mitt’s survival skills into practice and makes peace with his estranged father. However, the characterisations are bare blubber. Jay is a product of this setup, failing to stand on his own outside his scuba experience and daddy issues.
Mitt is downright unlikeable, his firm tactics in raising Jay feeling like little more than brutish hostility disguised as tough love. He never feels especially fleshed out beyond his gruff persona and underexplored nods to mental health struggles, which still doesn’t excuse his conduct. It feels as though big chunks of the father-son dynamic got left on the cutting room floor. When the script starts making connections between Mitt and the whale, the latter somehow embodying the voice of the former in a Mufasa-esque display of spirituality, these hollow explorations become just plain ridiculous.
What we’re left with is a survival story in which the characters are underdeveloped, the themes are routine, and the filmmaking isn’t all that evocative, or even interesting, outside of the incredulity of the premise. I’ll concede that I could be a better sport here – it’s not trying to be Moby Dick after all. But, at best, the picture is weird and, at worst, it doesn’t do much of anything that better survival films haven’t already done, right down to an explosive conclusion that anyone who’s seen a Jaws film can see coming from a mile away.
Whalefall might have bursts of enjoyment for the right person, but restrictive visuals, dull characters and a laboured premise undermine its aspirations. If you’d told me that 2026 would feature two films in which Austin Abrams’ character endures horrific odds, and that the Resident Evil film would be the superior of the two, I’d have probably scoffed. At least you know which one to see for your next cinema trip.
Whalefall is showing in cinemas nationwide from October 16.
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