Whalefall Review: Rapture of the Not-So-Deep

Whalefall begins with Josh Brolin securing a weighted diving belt to himself and jumping off the back of a boat with no air supply. The immediate response to this is to think, “Well, that’s one way to get out of appearing in this film.” Sadly, even hiding out in Davy Jones’ locker can’t save him from appearing in multitudinous flashbacks throughout this nonsensical hybrid survival adventure/body horror/father-son bonding drama.

Brolin plays Mitt, a surly and abusive maritime father who mostly appears in the memory of his estranged son, Jay. He’s played by Austin Abrams who, between this and Resident Evil, is the king of this year’s hapless horror summer. On the anniversary of daddy plummeting to the depths, Jay sets off into some of the most dangerous waters on the California coast, solo diving to find his remains that have lain at the bottom of the sea for a year. What Jay expects to find after the crabs have had their way for a year is unclear, and we’re already in so many currents of stupidity at this point that the plot is clearly capsizing. That’s even before he gets eaten by a whale.

Well, rather, he gets dragged into the mouth of a sperm whale by the giant squid that it’s chomping down for lunch. Unlike Pinocchio and Geppetto in the belly of Monstro, Jay doesn’t have a boat on which to sail away. So, with only about an hour of air left, he has four options for escape: get vomited out through the mouth; climb up the blowhole; take the, um, aft exit; or make his own egress, like Derek chainsawing his way right through the alien overlord at the end of Bad Taste.

Actually, Peter Jackson’s splatter-punk gem is an apt comparison, as are the earlier gonzo comedies of Sam Raimi. Due to the close confinements of the whale’s digestive tract, cinematographer Aaron Morton is forced into some extreme close-ups of Abrams that make him look like Bruce Campbell at his most bulging-eyed.

Moreover, the occasional fistfights with that pesky and very much not-dead-yet squid give some sequences that Raimi-esque Looney Tunes vibe that sits at odds with the very Nineties Cronenbergian body horror and the Hallmark-level tearjerking about strained family bonds. Whalefall is a tonal mess, and it’s clear that director and journeyman screenwriter Brian Duffield (No One Will Save You, Underwater) was always the wrong choice to adapt Pulitzer-winner Daniel Kraus’ 2023 novel. Then again, Kraus is co-credited on the script, so it’s his fault too.

Abrams can definitely handle the sillier aspects quite well, but it could be any bland, slightly nebbishy everyman actor in the more character-driven elements. He’s also not helped by having to deliver most of his lines with a breathing regulator wedged in his mouth, muffling potentially important line delivery like Tom Hardy rehearsing to play Bane.

None of this is really helped by Brolin, who rolls out yet another version of his “hoary and grumpy wise man” character. Game as he is, he channels the nautical authenticity of the Sea Captain from The Simpsons, rambling on in drunken quasi-mystical shanties about the terrible beauty of the seas and spiritual connections to whales. This mumbo-jumbo may have worked in the book, but on the screen it’s all so patently ridiculous and paper-thin that it feels like a desperate attempt to add some kind of philosophical weight to a story that neither needs nor can support it.

What gets Whalefall through are some spectacular set pieces and Morton’s spectacular underwater cinematography, but neither can hide that this is the smartest possible version of a truly dumb movie. Quite honestly, both we and the whales deserve better.

Whalefall

2026, PG-13, 106 min. Directed by Brian Duffield. Starring Austin Abrams, Josh Brolin, Elisabeth Shue, John Ortiz, Jane Levy, Emily Rudd.

⭐⭐

Rating: 1.5 out of 5.

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