Whalefall Review: A Tense Survival Story That Is Really About a Father and Son

Going into Whalefall, we expected a movie focused almost entirely on Jay trying to get out of a whale. It's still a survival story at its core, but it turns out to be a lot more about Jay's relationship with his father, and the two of us came away with different verdicts.

The setup is simple. Jay, played by Austin Abrams, is swallowed by a massive sperm whale with only an hour of oxygen left, and he realizes that the hard-earned lessons his father imparted may be the key to his escape. The film is based on the novel of the same name.

Whalefall opens with a self-harm scene, so know that before you go in

There are a few triggers in this movie that a lot of people need to know about before going in. If you have any kind of issues with self-harm, know that it's pretty much the first scene the movie throws at you. So be very careful going into this one if certain things might be uncomfortable for your personal experiences.

If that's something you don't want to see but you still want to see the movie, it's literally right up top. Skipping roughly the first five minutes should make sure you miss that scene specifically.

The flashbacks with Josh Brolin give Whalefall its layers

When we saw the trailer, we really thought it was just going to be a survival movie, and at the core of it all it still is. Jay has an hour of oxygen and has to do what he can to survive and escape, which is an incredible feat in itself. What we weren't really aware of was how much of the film would be flashbacks and the lessons Jay learned from his father, played by Josh Brolin.

Those emotional flashback scenes give layers to these characters and explain why Jay is doing what he's doing. They also break up the tension you feel when you see Jay in the stomach of the whale. There are a lot of moments with very strong aspects of claustrophobia, and some parts make you jump or cringe at how gross Jay's situation is, so it's really good to have these heartfelt character development moments to break up his time inside the belly of the whale.

Otherwise, you'd be fist clenching on the edge of your seat the whole movie. That can also be fun, and some movies are crafted that way. But there was something about experiencing the whale stomach alongside Jay that is just so much anxiety.

Austin Abrams carries the fear, the despair and the grief

That anxiety plays into not just the graphic images on screen but how Abrams portrays Jay's emotions: his anxiety level, his need to survive, his despair and his moments of kind of giving up. The flashbacks then paint a broader picture of the relationship he had with his father and what motivated him to dive off the coast in search of his father's remains.

So this is definitely a thriller about survival in a crazy scenario, but it's also a story of loss, grief, words kind of unspoken and lessons learned. There's a lot encompassed into this one film, and it seems Abrams was like the perfect person to lead it.

Even with the respirator in his mouth, he somehow makes you feel his fear, his anxiety and his panic. He does an amazing job of making you feel for him and cringe through the hard moments, and he lands the emotional beats too. When the film moves from inside the whale to a flashback with his dad, you feel those emotional kicks. You see the regret he has, but you also understand the choices he made at the time, when he was younger.

Whalefall was shot well before Abrams' Resident Evil role

Abrams and the film's director both showed up to the screening we were invited to, and that's where we found out this was actually filmed way before Resident Evil. He has probably already said this in countless interviews.

The director told the story of calling Zach Cregger, the director of Resident Evil and Weapons. Cregger had worked with Abrams on Weapons, and the director wanted to work with him on this. After the team saw his auditions, they were, in the director's words, "just kind of consistently knocked out by this guy." Everyone had already signed off, but he wanted to check with Cregger that Abrams was good to work with. Cregger apparently said he was great and that they had to cast him, but not to go long, because he needed Abrams for Resident Evil. This was before Weapons came out, too.

When the director asked who Abrams was playing in Resident Evil, Cregger said he's the only guy. The director's response: "Well, he's also kind of the only guy in this movie."

Two harrowing Abrams movies back to back

Abrams has been traumatizing in two movies back to back where he's kind of carrying the weight of the movie on his shoulders as the sole survivor, stuck in insane scenarios and somehow continuing to survive. His performance is great. What's frustrating is that he plays an everyday man surviving these crazy situations.

Going into both movies, the thought was, "I can survive this, too. I have a strong will." After seeing both, the answer was: "Nope, absolutely not. I would have given up in the earlier half of the first act." Abrams really sells that feeling of thinking he's going to die, right down to the screaming.

Josh Brolin brings an intense presence as Jay's father

Brolin does an amazing job here as well. He has that deep, intense presence he brings to a lot of his movies, especially his voice. He and Abrams were both in Weapons together, and then they come and do this, which is kind of awesome.

The relationship is uncomfortable, but there's a willingness to keep trying. You get Jay's perspective on it and his dad's perspective on it, and the two of them never met on the same ground because they simply didn't know the right way to communicate. They weren't on the same wavelength, but there was never any ill will intended toward each other. That's where the conflict in the relationship lies, and it was really cool to see the film peel it back through the lessons and memories, and show how Jay can take those past lessons to survive the whale.

Even though it's set in the belly of a whale, this movie is really more about the relationship between a father and son: what would I have done differently, what can I still learn from these moments, and how do I survive using the lessons my father taught me. There's a heaviness to it that we hadn't really seen much of in the trailers, which mostly focus on him being swallowed by a whale, the big selling marketing point.

You'll need some suspension of disbelief for Whalefall

Make sure you go in with a good amount of suspension of disbelief. There are moments where you think there's no way he would have survived an hour. If you've looked into it, it would have to be the biggest sperm whale ever to have actually swallowed a human being.

There are also a couple of moments later on where you think he'd be dead right now, with no recovering from some of the things that happen. We won't spoil the ending, but it's more about the journey than the end result.

Our verdicts split between not for me and a matinee

One take: it was intense, with a lot of moments that felt too gross to look at. The story of how Jay uses the teaching of a father he had a really hard relationship with was kind of interesting, and the performances were great, but there's no appetite here for the tension of these kinds of movies. There are a lot of moments where you'll hold your breath, not just out of sympathy but because it's so gross. That rating: not for me, despite appreciating the father and son relationship.

The other take: it was a surprise. It's still mostly set in the whale, but the scenes with Jay and his father give a broader picture of his why, and the message touches on how someone handles grief, loss and what is spoken or left unspoken. That aspect got quite emotional. The belly of the whale scenes are really intense, and not just graphic: the sound design leans into squishy, crunching and clicky sounds, which were extra loud in the theater we went to. At one point that meant covering ears and thinking, "I can't listen to this. This is so much." But was it enjoyable? Heck yes. A movie like Whalefall needs to be experienced in a theater with an audience, the way you'd want to enjoy a horror movie or a thriller. That rating: a matinee.

Which moment inside the whale's stomach made you react the most?