Whalefall (2026) 20th Century/Thriller RT: 106 minutes Rated PG-13 (peril, violent content, bloody images, some strong language, thematic content) Director: Brian Duffield Screenplay: Brian Duffield and Daniel Kraus Music: Joseph Trapanese Cinematography: Aaron Morton Release date: October 16, 2026 (US) Cast: Austin Abrams, Josh Brolin, Elisabeth Shue, John Ortiz, Jane Levy, Emily Rudd.
Rating: ***
The trailer tells you Whalefall is a gripping survival thriller about a young man who gets swallowed by a sperm whale. It doesn’t tell you the man’s situation is a metaphor for his rocky relationship with his father. It works well enough as both, but struggles to stay afloat because it doesn’t provide enough information for those of us who aren’t marine biologists.
Rising star Austin Abrams (Weapons, Resident Evil) does NOT play a character named Jonah. His name is Jay (eh, close enough). He refuses to deal with the death of his terminally ill father Mitt (Brolin, Dune 1 & 2) with whom he shared a contentious relationship. Not wanting to die in a hospital bed, Mitt takes his own life by drowning himself in the Pacific Ocean. He left behind letters for his entire family, but Jay refuses to read his.
Mitt trained his son from a young age to scuba dive. Jay wasn’t as into it as his dad which often frustrated the older man. He nonetheless decides to go looking for his father’s body in the depths of the ocean. While he’s down there, he has an encounter with a giant squid and a whale. He doesn’t get away fast enough and the squid drags him into the belly of the whale. With only one hour’s worth of oxygen in his tank, he has to find a way to escape before he’s digested.
Brian Duffield, the writer of Cocaine Bear, does a masterful job with Whalefall. He directs with confidence even though he fails to fill in a few crucial blanks. I’m sure most people do not have an intimate knowledge of the anatomy of a whale. They probably don’t know a whale has three stomachs. He also doesn’t give us a full sense of internal geography. A lot of the time, it’s hard to say where Jay is inside the whale. However, Duffield does give us a palpable sense of claustrophobia. We share Jay’s fear and pain as he’s trapped inside this enormous animal being crushed and burned by digestive acid. That’s on top of having limited oxygen in a toxic environment.
The special effects work is solid. Duffield’s production team built full-scale 360-degree sets of the whale’s interior for Abrams to act in. They also constructed rigs designed to spin around to simulate being inside the creature. The heart and walls of the interiors are animatronics. There’s also some CGI, most notably in the scenes of the whale jumping out the water. On a technical level, Whalefall is fairly impressive.
The acting in Whalefall is actually quite good. Abrams is going places for sure. He was convincing as a homeless drug addict in Weapons and a hapless delivery driver in Resident Evil (both Zach Cregger films). He’s equally good as a frightened young college guy going through physical and psychological crises that become intertwined. As he fights for his life, he thinks back to the things his father taught him, lessons he never he imagined he’d use…. until now. It’s these lessons that will help him survive.
Brolin is also great as the rough-edged dad who loves the ocean. He believes it will always provide. We get to know him through flashbacks and imagined conversations. Elisabeth Shue (Leaving Las Vegas) plays his mother who tries to convince Jay to see his dying father only to be met with refusal. She doesn’t have a big role, but she makes the most of her screen time. Jane Levy (Don’t Breathe) and Emily Rudd (Fear Street 1-3) perform well as Jay’s older sisters.
The screenplay by Duffield and Daniel Kraus, the writer of the novel on which Whalefall is based, is pretty well written. Like I said, more information would have been nice, but I can see why they avoid that. They don’t want to turn popcorn entertainment into a middle school biology lesson. That’s really my only complaint about Whalefall. It doesn’t hurt the experience too badly. Sure, the visuals overwhelm the story, but some movies are meant to be experienced this way. I think it’s a good movie. Still, sperm whales have nothing on great white sharks.
