Title: Whalefall
Director: Brian Duffield
Cast: Austin Abrams, Josh Brolin, Elisabeth Shue, John Ortiz, Jane Levy, Emily Rudd
Where: In theatres.
Rating: 3 1/2 Stars
Review
Being swallowed by a whale is an occupational hazard few scuba divers would list on their résumés. For Jay Gardiner, however, a disastrous encounter with a sperm whale turns an already ill-advised underwater expedition into an exceptionally unpleasant race against his oxygen supply. Brian Duffield’s Whalefall, adapted from Daniel Kraus’s novel, takes this outlandish premise seriously enough to make your stomach churn, even when its storytelling threatens to test your patience.
Jay has ventured into dangerous waters searching for the remains of his dead father, Mitt, a celebrated diver with whom he shared a deeply troubled relationship. Once inside the whale, survival becomes a succession of grisly obstacles involving hostile marine creatures, treacherous biological terrain and dwindling air. The premise is admirably economical, and Duffield extracts considerable tension from the predicament, making the whale’s interior an oppressive world of uncertain geography and grotesque surprises.
The trouble begins when the film tries to turn this ordeal into an extended exercise in filial reconciliation. Flashbacks and conversations with the dead father repeatedly interrupt the struggle, giving Jay’s predicament an emotional dimension that occasionally feels imposed rather than earned. Grief may behave irrationally, but the screenplay’s determination to find profound meaning in every bodily catastrophe can become exhausting. Even a whale has its limits as a therapist.
Actors’ Performance
Austin Abrams shoulders the film with remarkable commitment, conveying panic, pain and mounting desperation largely through his eyes, laboured breathing and physical reactions. Confined for much of the film to an environment where articulate conversation is hardly an option, he makes Jay’s struggle compelling even when the screenplay leaves him little to do beyond suffer another indignity.
Josh Brolin brings welcome complexity to Mitt, a domineering father whose affection is entangled with cruelty and impossible expectations. He gives the character enough vulnerability to explain Jay’s conflicted attachment without entirely excusing the damage he caused. Elisabeth Shue, Jane Levy and Emily Rudd have comparatively little room to develop Jay’s family beyond their contribution to his grief.
Music and Aesthetics
The production design and visual effects create an unsettling aquatic nightmare, with the whale’s vast interior offering a suitably surreal setting for Jay’s increasingly desperate attempts to escape. Cinematographer Aaron Morton emphasises his vulnerability against the surrounding mass, while the sound design and Joseph Trapanese’s score supply much of the urgency when the action becomes visually difficult to follow. Some sequences are murky, however, and the creature encounters occasionally sacrifice clarity for spectacle.
FPJ Verdict
Overall, the film offers genuine tension and moments of visual audacity, even if its emotional revelations are less convincing than its appetite for the grotesque. Worth a dive, perhaps, provided you can stomach the journey.
