Joey Magidson
It can be forgiven for someone to do a double take when told the premise of Whalefall. After all, it’s such a big idea, one that can easily come off as silly, that a serious survival thriller sounds less likely than a comedy. Given the presence of co-writer/director Brian Duffield, I suspected he’d be able to pull it off, but you never know until you see the final product. Well, I can report that the film, while occasionally a bit overwrought when it comes to the father/son tensions (some men will truly get swallowed by a whale before dealing with their daddy issues), is a tense success story, full of big emotions.
Whalefall may seem like a limited set up for a movie, but Duffield and company get a surprising amount of mileage out of it. The flashback structure obviously helps, but there’s an appropriate amount of setting things up to solidify the stakes. This is just a very well made flick, one that may well generate tears while watching a man struggle against being digested by a sperm whale. Go figure, right?
Jay Gardiner (Austin Abrams) has always had a difficult relationship with his father Mitt (Josh Brolin). The latter always wanted to toughen the former up, obviously out of love, but it always came off negatively, leading to a lifelong struggle to communicate. After a falling out towards the end of Mitt’s life, Jay went away to college, missing his death at sea. A year later, he’s home, supporting his mother (Elisabeth Shue) and sisters (Jane Levy and Emily Rudd), but seemingly numb to losing his father. However, early one morning, he sets out to do a secret dive, with the purpose of recovering his father’s body.
While searching, the unthinkable happens, as Jay is swallowed by an 80-foot, 60-ton sperm whale. With an hour of oxygen in his tank, it’s a race against time to find some way to get out of the whale. As he struggles for survival, the odds deeply against him, he flashes back on some seminal memories with Mitt, some good, plenty bad. As he does this, Jay begins to realize that the hard lessons his father imparted on him may actually be the keys to his improbable escape. Of course, he’ll also have to come to terms with his father’s death, which would be hard enough at land, let alone in a whale’s stomach…
Austin Abrams gets beaten to hell once again in 2026, this time with more dramatic effect than the hilarious maladies he goes through in Resident Evil. Both performances are very strong, with the latter offering more comedy, while this is far more of a drama. The emotional beats opposite Josh Brolin can get hokey at times, but they’re also deeply effective, largely due to the two of them. Abrams is qucikly becoming an exciting actor to watch try to survive. As for Brolin, it’s very much a role in his wheelhouse, but that doesn’t take away from how he aces the role. The supporting cast, in addition to a largely wasted Jane Levy and Elisabeth Shue, includes the aforementioned Emily Rudd, alongside a small part for John Ortiz.
Filmmaker Brian Duffield, adapting the novel of the same name by Daniel Kraus (they wrote the adaptation together), once again takes a tricky book and makes it sing. He did it with Spontaneous (which I raved about here), so it should be no surprise, but here the scale is much larger. Duffield’s direction is claustrophobic and never has you confused about what’s going on inside the whale. It’s further evidence that he’s a hell of director and should be at the top of the list for some major gigs. As for the screenplay, it occasionally goes a little over the top with the melodramatic father/son dynamic, but when the emotions come, they do feel earned and real.
Whalefall arguably shouldn’t work, or at the very least, shouldn’t work as well as is does, so Duffield and company deserve a lot of credit for the success here. The film is a unique survival tale that manages to keep you on the edge of your seat. This is a movie that offers something different and then delivers on that promise.
SCORE: ★★★
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