Whalefall – Movie Review
Austin Abrams has made a habit of playing scraggly Gen Z everymen having the worst days of their lives. Whether falling victim to witch possession in Weapons or outrunning monstrous mutants in Resident Evil, he’s become something of a specialist at playing ordinary men in extraordinary circumstances. Now, in Whalefall, an adaptation of Daniel Kraus’ 2023 survival thriller novel of the same name, Abrams finds himself in perhaps his most stomach-churning predicament yet.
Following the suicide of his father, Mitt (Josh Brolin), diver Jay Gardiner (Abrams) ventures off the coast of California in search of his remains. Instead, he finds himself swallowed whole by a sperm whale, leaving him trapped inside its stomach with a rapidly dwindling oxygen supply. With time running out, Jay must find a way to escape while confronting the memories of a hard father whose harsh lessons he may need to survive.
As a survival thriller, Whalefall is an impressively visceral experience. Between swallowed squid, contracting stomach muscles, corrosive digestive acids and an assortment of other biological hazards, the film certainly knows how to make its audience uncomfortable. The sound design, visual effects and production design combine to create an environment that is both claustrophobic and horrifying. From snapped bones to necrotic hands and burst eardrums, this is decidedly not a film for the faint of heart. Abrams also does a commendable job of grounding Jay’s increasingly desperate struggle in a recognisable sense of panic and physical exhaustion.
But beneath the gruesome spectacle there’s attempts at a story about grief and the complicated legacy of a difficult parent. As Jay battles to escape the whale, memories and nitrogen necrosis hallucinations bring his deceased father back into his consciousness. Their relationship was fractured by Mitt’s controlling nature and inability to connect with his son, leaving Jay to grapple with a loss that is anything but straightforward.
Brolin makes for a deliberately unpleasant father figure, and that is precisely the point. Jay is mourning someone he never truly understood, a man whose affection was difficult to distinguish from the damage he inflicted. It is an uncomfortable but worthwhile exploration of how grief can become especially complicated when the person you have lost is also the person who hurt you. Sometimes, what we mourn most is not the person themselves, but the relationship we wish we could have had.
Unfortunately, Whalefall struggles to reconcile its two competing ambitions. The technical filmmaking is impressive, but the screenplay repeatedly undermines its survival thriller with an increasingly heavy-handed emotional allegory. The whale-as-father metaphor is about as subtle as a sperm whale is large, and the film seems determined to turn practically every development into a symbolic reflection of Jay’s relationship with Mitt.
There is only so much thematic weight one can squeeze out of a man trapped inside a whale before the whole exercise starts to feel a little ridiculous. The premise already requires a considerable suspension of disbelief, but rather than allowing its extraordinary survival scenario to speak for itself, Whalefall keeps piling on the symbolism. Its attempts at profundity occasionally come at the expense of the very emotional complexity it wants to explore.
There is a compelling story here about grief, trauma and learning to live with the complicated memories of those we have lost. Abrams delivers a strong central performance, while the technical craftsmanship makes for an intensely unpleasant experience in the best possible way. However, the film never quite manages to bring its visceral thrills and emotional ambitions together into a satisfying whole. Whalefall is frequently gripping, occasionally moving and certainly a lot to stomach. I just wish it had more faith in its own story, rather than trying to swallow quite so much at once.
Whalefall is in Australian cinemas now
