Final Rating: 4/5
A grieving diver recounts his life from the inside of a whale in Whalefall.
Based on the 2023 novel by Daniel Kraus, Whalefall, directed by Brian Duffield, stars Austin Abrams as Jay, a university student who returns home after the death of his father, Mitt (Josh Brolin). On a whim, he takes his father’s diving equipment and goes on one last dive, only to encounter a giant squid uncommonly close to the shore. Even worse: that giant squid is being pursued by a sperm whale, who indiscriminately swallows both for breakfast.
Shown alongside Jay’s fight for survival are flashbacks fleshing out his relationship with his dad. Jay and Mitt’s relationship was tenuous, to say the least. Mitt tries to pass down whatever he can to his son, but his attempts to turn his son into a formidable diver alienate Jay. By the time his dad passes, Jay has stopped talking to him entirely and moved to landlocked Iowa.
Yet Mitt’s wisdom ends up coming in handy once Jay is up against the clock. Suddenly, the pop quizzes on the percentage of oxygen in a tank and factoids about whale vocal chords seem pretty useful. Narratively, these flashbacks maintain the film’s brisk pace and tension while meting out breadcrumbs of information.
For Jay, they reveal a side of his father buried under his rough exterior. As he warms to Mitt’s memory, the flashbacks give way to fantasies. Jay begins to imagine conversations he never got to have with his dad: bonding over favourite books and whether or not Jay has a girlfriend.
Over time, Mitt begins to feel like Mufasa from The Lion King, guiding his heir from beyond the grave. At one point, Jay even hallucinates his dad speaking through the whale. The creature momentarily becomes an unlikely ally, while Mitt’s suffocating influence on Jay’s life becomes more literal than metaphorical.
Abrams speaking to no one, and Brolin calmly responding – his speech slowed as if to mimic a whale’s song – feels surprisingly sweet, rather than corny thanks to the work put into establishing that relationship.
Sperm whales are the only whale species with a throat big enough to fit a human. But far from the luxurious caverns provided to the likes of Pinocchio and Jonah, Jay spends most of the movie in a dark space with just enough room for him to crouch.
The camera itself has nowhere to go: Jay is usually centred in a small amount of water, supported on every side by whale flesh. Shot changes to show him reaching for something or trying to move only emphasize how little room he has. And of course, being inside of a living creature, the space is liable to contract without warning, each “gulp” threatening to crush all or part of Jay’s body in seconds.
The insides of the whale are rendered as realistically as possible. The production design is visually captivating, and also gross. Jay is at the mercy of an assortment of sphincters, expanding and contracting to reveal his only means of traversal, but never guaranteeing safety on the other end. One memorable scene has Jay move further into the whale, treading hopefully into a viscous puddle of waist-high yellow ooze before realizing he’s being boiled alive by stomach acid.
Within his little cave, Jay is forced to share his space with… everything else the whale sucks up. While this includes a few useful tools for survival – a bioluminescent jellyfish provides light, and a stray sock serves as a means of picking up the jellyfish – it also includes the giant squid the whale originally intended to eat. Early on, Jay additionally has to contend with another sea creature fighting for its life in the body of a predator.
While Jay’s cetaceous prison is less cozy than the giant fish of the bible, or Pinocchio’s Monstro, his plight is similar. Rejecting his destiny but seeing no other way forward, a man is driven out to sea only to swim right into a trap. Only by reconciling with his father and his own past can he survive his impossible prison and assume his rightful place in the world. Duffield and Kraus’ story updates a tale as old as time for a modern audience, with a moving and relatable central relationship.
Whalefall was seen during the 2026 Toronto After Dark Film Festvial.
