WHALEFALL Reviewed by GREG KING
Director: Brian Duffield
Stars: Austin Abrams, Josh Brolin, Elisabeth Shue, John Ortiz, Jane Levy, Emily Rudd, Sam Franich.
This contemporary take on the Biblical tale of Jonah and the whale is based on the 2021 novel written by Daniel Kraus, well known for his frequent collaborations with Guillermo Del Toro and George A Romero. But whereas Jonah spent forty days and forty nights inside the belly of the beast, here our hero only spends one hour trapped inside the whale.
Jay Gardiner (Austin Abrams, recently seen in Resident Evil) is a young scuba diver who goes looking for the body of his father Mitt (played by Josh Brolin in flashback) who preferred to drown himself in the ocean rather than endure mesothelioma, a painful terminal illness. His body is never recovered.
While searching the depths he gets tangled up with a giant squid. Both are then swallowed by a large sperm whale. Jay spends most of the time trapped inside the suffocating confines of the whale’s stomach.
With only sixty minutes of air left in his oxygen tank Jay has to draw on the lessons taught to him by his late father to survive the ordeal. Jay tries to reconcile his troubled relationship with his father while trying to survive his ordeal. He gives voice to his thoughts as he seems to telepathically communicates with his dead father. Jay’s ordeal can be seen as a metaphor for that reconnection between himself and his late, estranged father, who he misunderstood. Duffield employs plenty of flashback sequences to explore the relationship between Jay and his father.
The third feature film directed by Brian Duffield, Whalefall is a claustrophobic and harrowing drama. This is essentially a survival thriller and surprisingly gripping for much of the time. Duffield relies on special effects for plenty of icky moments with stomach acids, and bodily fluids.
Whalefall is a survival thriller, and it features some great special effects and practical effects to create the whale’s stomach. A practical 12-foot-tall, 18-feet-wide whale was constructed for the shoot, and the interior of the whale’s stomach is quite convincing. Visually there is some breathtaking cinematography from Aaron Morton, who works in close up a lot of the time, and whose creative framing adds to the claustrophobic feel of the material. Towards the end, the visuals turn more ethereal, giving the ocean depths and the whale an almost supernatural quality.
This is another intense and physical performance for Abrams, who acquits himself well and he apparently performed most of his own stunts. Jay spends much of the time covered in slime and other nasty bodily fluids. Abrams carries the film with his fully committed and physical performance, but between his role here and Resident Evil he probably deserves a break for his next film.
Brolin brings his usual gruff nature to his role as Jay’s domineering father, who demonstrates a kind of “tough love” on his son when explaining scuba diving to him. We haven’t seen a lot of Elizabeth Shue on screen recently, but here she contributes an extended cameo appearance as Jay’s concerned and sympathetic mother.
However, Whalefall is a rather thin idea stretched out to 106 minutes. Some suspension of disbelief is required to swallow the premise of the film. The film is based on a lean premise, but it explores heavy themes including grief, trauma, complex father son relationships, survival. It also delivers a strong ecologically friendly message about the importance of whales in the ocean ecosystem. The finale of the film has something of a spiritual resonance.
★★★
