Intensity 🩸🩸1/2 out of 🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸
Directed by Brian Duffield
Written by Brian Duffield and Daniel Kraus
Unquestionably, Whalefall’s premise is horrifying. A man gets swallowed whole by a sperm whale, and is faced with the impossible task of extricating himself from a fleshy prison. It’s the full Jonah conundrum. The movie, though extraordinarily implausible, does follow some rough logic. This is a unique concept, and leaps towards the front of the “Swallowed whole by a monster” trope, but how does it hold up as a narrative? There are moments of absolutely white knuckle thrills, but also some eye-rolling situations that are… a little hard to swallow.
“Now the LORD had appointed a great fish to swallow Jonah, and Jonah spent three days and three nights in the belly of the fish.”
Jonah 1:17
Let’s get this out of the way first. This situation is about as far fetched as it comes. It’s bad for Jay (The diver), it’s bad for the whale, and bad for the giant squid. Honestly, I’m sympathetic to all involved. The whale isn’t hunting Jay. Jay is just collateral damage. The squid however… not so lucky. As if being swallowed whole and not getting instantly killed could be considered lucky. This survival horror tale is based on a novel by Daniel Kraus, after he saw a viral video of kayakers getting “swallowed” by a humpback whale. (Wrong type of whale for that, btw.)
The movie strikes an earnest tone. There are no cheeky puns or humorous asides. The concept is being considered deadly seriously. It also approaches the event earnestly, and it triggers all kinds of panic adrenaline for the audience… or for me, at least. The story intermixes the horrifying event with an amost equally horrifying relationship study between a young man and his overbearing father.
The Cast of Whalefall:
- Austin Abrams plays Jay Gardiner, a young man who just left his seaside California home for the University of Iowa, getting as far away from his training as a scuba diver, and his dad, as he can.
- Josh Brolin plays Mitt Gardiner, Jay’s father, and the saltiest of salty dogs. He is a veteran scuba diver, and is succumbing to mesothelioma. He loves Jay, but is heavy handed and strict to the point of driving Jay away.
- Elisabeth Shue plays Zara Gardiner, Jay’s mom.
- John Ortiz plays Hewey, Mitt’s diving mate, and an old family friend.
- Jane Levy plays Eva Gardiner, one of Jay’s sisters.
- Emily Rudd plays nan Gardiner, Jay’s other sister.
A Synopsis of Whalefall:
Mitt and his mate Hewey are floating on Mitt’s fishing boat in Monterrey Bay. The old diver drops some letters to his family into a dive box, straps on some weight belts, and jumps into the bay as Hewey Weeps. Mitt is going out his way, casting himself to the sea.
One year later, Jay returns home from college, reuniting with his mom and sisters to memorialize his father’s passing. Mitt’s body was not recovered, and Jay is riddled with guilt for the lack of closure he had with his dad. Mitt trained Jay to be a scuba diver, but he was a harsh critic. Despite the tough love, Jay became an experienced diver. To resolve his emotional turmoil, Jay sneaks off on a solo dive to try and recover his father’s body from a trench near Monastary Beach. At the local dive shop, he encounters Hewey, who offers to take Jay out for a dive for old time’s sake. The police have cordoned off the beach due to orca activity in the bay. Hold on to that fact drop.
Jay battles the waves, and begins his search through the kelp forest in the early morning gloom. Jay peers over the edge of a deep trench, where it is believed Mitt sacrificed himself. A booming echo fortells the arrival of a hunt coming from the deep. A giant squid emerges from the depths, with an enormous sperm whale in pursuit. Jay watches in astonishment, and tries to flee through the kelp forest, but gets caught up in the battle.
Jay is caught like a proverbial deer in the headlights as the whale and squid drive right into the unfortunate diver. The squid, being consumed by the whale, reaches out and snares Jay in desperation. As the whale swallows the squid, Jay is drawn into the leviathan’s maw and gets swallowed whole as well.
Inside the Whale:
Jay is concussed, but remarkably uninjured from his ordeal. Unfortunately, he is inside a whale, with about an hour’s worth of oxygen. More bad news, the giant squid isn’t dead and both of them are stuck in the whale’s first stomach cavity. A fight for survival between Jay and the squid within the stomach ensues. The good news? There’s a bit of bioluminescent light eminating from some jellyfish that the whale has consumed. And there is some gas in the stomach chamber, but not breathable.
The squid overwhelms Jay, which is a much better combatant in the confined chamber. However, Jay catches a break as the whale’s stomach contractions crush the squid and suck it into the next digestive chamber. It’s a momentary respite though, as the situation remains dire. The stomach is a disorienting place, and it isn’t like there are any exit signs, and one direction means getting dissolved in stomach acid and getting crushed like the squid. Plus, there’s only so much air left in the scuba tank, and the jellyfish will lose their luminescence if they die. Oh, and the whale is diving deeper and deeper.
It’s an impossible situation. Even if he manages to carve his way out of the stomach, or climb through the mouth, he might just end up in the crushing depths of the abyss and not enough air to surface. Jay reflects back on his relationship with his dad in a series of flashbacks. Expectations. Regrets. Hope dwindles. But perhaps there’s something in his training that will show him the way out. It really doesn’t look good.
Evaluation of Whalefall:
This is essentially a one person story, with occasional moments of the father/son dynamics. Austin Abrams is having a moment in the genre. He was a background player in The Walking Dead (Ron). But he has really become a horror player in Weapons (2025) as the addict, James, and the leading man in Resident Evil (2026), as well as Whalefall. There is an edgy fragility to him that makes him an ideal Final Guy. He’s not the classic alpha, but he can handle himself under duress, and it makes him easy to root for.
James Brolin plays the dad who will trigger any latent feelings about your own dad issues within you. He’s not a bad man, but he doesn’t understand how to love his kid. Mitt wants so badly for his boy to love what he does, that it becomes smothering. It also is abundantly clear that Jay is not going to survive this ordeal without tapping into his father’s wisdom. It’s an effective dynamic.
The whale attack is an absolute roller coaster thrill ride, that will have you holding your breath.
The plausibility meter runs pretty low, though, the further we dive into the film. After a bit of research, it’s clear that the producers did plenty of homework to try and craft a scenario that, however improbable, holds some kernels of truth.
The Plausibility Meter:
- Could a sperm whale actually swallow a human whole? YES. It has an enormous esophogas, and it doesn’t have molars to grind its food, so it swallows prey whole.
- Would the body of the whale protect living prey in the stomach from being crushed by the pressure of the ocean depths? NO. If anything, it would help to crush the contents.
- Do whales cough? Could you try to induce the whale to cough you out? NO. Whales don’t have the cough reflex. That would make it tricky for digestion because, as noted before… they swallow their food largely whole.
- Whales have four chambered stomachs. That first chamber is storage, without acid, and is used to crush the food. LOGIC HOLDS!
- Would a sperm whale try and eat a human? NO. Humans are not on the menu. That said, this was a collatoral damage situation. Jay was an ornament attached to the squid. The Jaws inspired poster is misleading.
- Would a sperm whale feed at the surface like this? PROBABLY NOT. There’s a reason why we almost never see giant squid. They live in the abyss. However, in this situation, the squid was desperate and rose up the water column.
- Is there actually air in the stomach of a whale? NO. Or, at least not that much. This appears to be a nod to the narrative need of the film. If anything, it would be filled with sea water.
- Sperm whales don’t typically breach with their mouths open at the surface. They breathe through their blowhole nostrils on the top of their skulls. They do, however, occasionally leap out of the water.
- Do orca hunt sperm whales? RARELY. But, it does happen. But this is a big sperm whale, and the orca would be taking a big risk hunting this one.
For more thoughts on how realistic this movie is, Nadira Goffe at SLATE did an interview with CETI biologist Shand Gero, that is very interesting.
Concluding Thoughts:
This is a memorable and entertaining film, if a bit uneven at times. The visuals are appropriately claustrophobic, and even though you know that Jay is going to get swallowed, that sequence is one for the ages. Even if the logic holds up in individual examples, the overall logic requires so many amazing, yet convenient, circumstances to occur that it stretches credulity. The pacing gets a bit clunky, with the action getting interrupted by flashbacks to Mitt and Jay, but the exposition is necessary, if a bit unwieldy.
With all that stated, this is an entertaining film. The Mitt and Jay interactions give it some emotional gravity, but there is not a whole lot of dialogue in this film. Most of the time, however, the story and focus is on Jay. Oddly, I would have liked to have a little more context of the whale, from the outside, since most of the movie is on the inside of the whale. As the audience, we are as confused as Jay is, relative to where in the whale this takes place. Which way is up? Or more specifically, which way is out?
Whalefall has recently concluded most of its theatrical run, and will likely be on Disney+ soon (Parent of 20th Century studios) . The film is rated PG-13 for peril, viloent content, bloody images, some strong language, and thematic content. This is not a film suitable for young children, as it not only has some terrifying action, but will also require parents to explain what happened to the whale. Good luck with that!
Review by Eric Li
