How rare is it for a film to be the complete package, even if it needed extra time to lock in place? It ought to happen more often. Whalefall is a rare event-level big-screen enigma, a full motion picture experience whose intentions are beyond noble, and its incomprehensible mystery perhaps matches its best themes. Uncovering its intentions before realizations lock in on the kind of film it wants to be might only mean the viewer is on a higher path to enlightenment. Or they’ve read Daniel Kraus’s famed 2023 novel from cover to cover. Those cautiously navigating its central themes in their own lives, without having read the book, will still have a great deal to gain from this adaptation, expressing grief like notes on a bulletin board, similar in candid urgency.
Time was always ticking for Jay Gardiner (Austin Abrams) to connect with his dad, Mitt (Josh Brolin). He’s a tough-as-nails diver, determined to encourage a moral backbone in his son, a steel trap of resilience before he leaves the nest. Jay is itching to escape, unable to read his dad, who struggles to show love or support, hidden behind gruff, pushy disciplinarianism. Mitt’s attitude, even when facing a terminal illness, doesn’t improve enough for Jay to reach back out, their bond distancing to extremes when they’re not already seeing eye to eye.
A year after his passing, Jay, the youngest of three kids between Mitt and widowed wife Zara (an underused yet affable Elisabeth Shue), is now ready (begrudgingly) to return home to Monterey and face the music. The college freshman is convinced that since his dad gave himself to the ocean, trace elements of his body might be floating about still; likely just bones by now, but there’s always a shot. Using the skills Mitt taught him over the years, and despite his low confidence, Jay proceeds along the adjacent cove for a positive match. Only, of course, for the clock to tick faster when a giant sperm whale gulps him up and doesn’t discriminate about breakfast. His oxygen tank can only last for so long (namely an hour) before desperation sets in, clarity opens wider, and stomach acid threatens to, quite literally, scar someone for life.
Granted, life might not always run by a schedule, but there is still a time and place for moments of real bonding to hang in memory. If not, also, the type that sticks as instances of trauma. Director/co-writer Brian Duffield (Underwater, No One Can Save You) treats that idea like a two-way street, where tangible memories frozen in a certain time delicately unravel, right as a heavy kitchen sink of genre concepts enters the mix. As his lead character goes through the digestive wringer, Duffield pushes his known beats and elevates their collective claustrophobia. One moment, it’s a deliberate exercise in body horror; the next, a solitary creature feature. Then from there, a compact survival diatribe a la Gravity or All Is Lost. And finally, a seething deconstruction of a character’s soul crossed with a figurative game of catch or a last beer with a father figure we wish we could have, still struggling to read what they’re expressing as anything other than bleak misunderstanding.
The thematic pieces that Duffield and Kraus share in juggling are already substantial on their own. It might’ve just taken the first half of the runtime for everything to merge into a broader creative scheme, instead of a singular idea vying for dominant emotional weight. The marketing alone was pushing strictly for that race-against-the-clock motif, and I was unashamedly hooked. But perhaps that is counterproductive to the main point: unpacking grief hidden by an unresolved bane in a father/son dynamic, and not running away from it. You’re enclosed around it, and even with every attempt to avoid an untimely death, you can’t walk away until any unresolved tension is settled, and you’ve made peace with what a past life had left behind. Electively smart of this film to keep those tough feelings so self-contained, and oh so visceral. Time’s not kind in these moments, so it’s best to make progress in a hurry.
That is a firm testament to Abrams’s evolution as an actor; the guy cannot catch a break for his physical well-being, between this and what we saw of him weeks ago in Resident Evil. But in those moments of highest peril, his inventive resolve once more slices through the material with just reasoning. He is as scrappy as one can be while facing engulfment, vulnerable in compromise or regret, and unstoppably confident in his self-worth. Having Brolin as a mentor and sparring partner in filtering out harsh emotions is an exceptional casting move, and he owns every scene, most of which are one-on-one with Abrams. Especially with this story’s non-linear structure, they cannot simply pull away from each other’s line of sight, that physical barrier cleverly shuttering an imposed distance. And it quietly makes for another winning performance in a decade that has been rather kind to him, mostly disembodied and yet no less tethered to a conversational form by a reflective, gravelly compassion.
As for Duffield’s tactile and visual stimuli, Abrams remains the lone agent, a test pilot for compressed endurance in a fully hand-crafted atmospheric think tank. Ramsey Avery and an above-capable team did more than merely create the nightmarish space of a literal stomach from scratch. They anchored the right ambience and mental anguish that comes with solving residual conflict through their layered atmospherics, their fervor and clemency ably supported in a nearly stage-like manner. Cramped corners are nothing new in cinema. And yet, the concept takes a fresh stab here, expanded only by a determined will and breath control. It is a little tricky not to root for that demeanor within Abrams’ performance, the physical brunt accurately shot alongside that increasing compression by Jamie Alac and Aaron Morton in a tag-team effort (additional props to editor Pietro Scalia for appearing to cut against the grain with every simple action), making land-side and underwater scenery feel seamless, and the emotional quandary further cemented with every distorted, extreme close-up, or full-throated scream of torture.
Nothing else could match the raw nerve we see on Jay Gardiner’s face when trying to survive a moment that no one else should ever endure, let alone live through. And even despite the concern for post-event flashbacks darker than what he’d seen when his father was alive (that would make for a reasonable sequel if handled properly), that fear and desire live deep within him, and in Duffield’s determination to nail the novel’s respective theming and intonation, and heighten its stakes above the surface of another medium. Whalefall fits amazingly on the big screen, even if it doesn’t show grounded stewardship trying to cover multiple genres at once. The plot’s hearty core is still quite resolute, on a path to deliberate closure, to that final conversation we keep envisioning with a lost parent. The possibilities are limitless, with one foregone conclusion. I’d say this film hauntingly mirrors that idea, more than once.