{"id":15175,"date":"2026-10-16T23:21:15","date_gmt":"2026-10-17T03:21:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/?p=15175"},"modified":"2026-10-16T23:21:15","modified_gmt":"2026-10-17T03:21:15","slug":"whalefall","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/2026\/10\/16\/whalefall\/","title":{"rendered":"Whalefall"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Whalefall<\/strong> (2026)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 20th<\/sup> Century\/Thriller\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 106 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated PG-13 (peril, violent content, bloody images, some strong language, thematic content)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Brian Duffield\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Brian Duffield and Daniel Kraus\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Joseph Trapanese\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Aaron Morton\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: October 16, 2026 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Austin Abrams, Josh Brolin, Elisabeth Shue, John Ortiz, Jane Levy, Emily Rudd.<\/p>\n

Rating<\/strong>: ***<\/p>\n

The trailer tells you Whalefall<\/strong> is a gripping survival thriller about a young man who gets swallowed by a sperm whale. It doesn\u2019t tell you the man\u2019s 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\u2019t provide enough information for those of us who aren\u2019t marine biologists.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Mitt trained his son from a young age to scuba dive. Jay wasn\u2019t as into it as his dad which often frustrated the older man. He nonetheless decides to go looking for his father\u2019s body in the depths of the ocean. While he\u2019s down there, he has an encounter with a giant squid and a whale. He doesn\u2019t get away fast enough and the squid drags him into the belly of the whale. With only one hour\u2019s worth of oxygen in his tank, he has to find a way to escape before he\u2019s digested.<\/p>\n

Brian Duffield, the writer of Cocaine Bear, does a masterful job with Whalefall<\/strong>. He directs with confidence even though he fails to fill in a few crucial blanks. I\u2019m sure most people do not have an intimate knowledge of the anatomy of a whale. They probably don\u2019t know a whale has three stomachs. He also doesn\u2019t give us a full sense of internal geography. A lot of the time, it\u2019s hard to say where Jay is inside the whale. However, Duffield does give us a palpable sense of claustrophobia. We share Jay\u2019s fear and pain as he\u2019s trapped inside this enormous animal being crushed and burned by digestive acid. That\u2019s on top of having limited oxygen in a toxic environment.<\/p>\n

The special effects work is solid. Duffield\u2019s production team built full-scale 360-degree sets of the whale\u2019s 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\u2019s also some CGI, most notably in the scenes of the whale jumping out the water. On a technical level, Whalefall<\/strong> is fairly impressive.<\/p>\n

The acting in Whalefall<\/strong> 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\u2019s 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\u2019d use…. until now. It\u2019s these lessons that will help him survive.<\/p>\n

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\u2019t have a big role, but she makes the most of her screen time. Jane Levy (Don\u2019t Breathe) and Emily Rudd (Fear Street 1-3) perform well as Jay\u2019s older sisters.<\/p>\n

The screenplay by Duffield and Daniel Kraus, the writer of the novel on which Whalefall<\/strong> 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\u2019t want to turn popcorn entertainment into a middle school biology lesson. That\u2019s really my only complaint about Whalefall<\/strong>. It doesn\u2019t hurt the experience too badly. Sure, the visuals overwhelm the story, but some movies are meant to be experienced this way. I think it\u2019s a good movie. Still, sperm whales have nothing on great white sharks.\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Whalefall (2026)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 20th Century\/Thriller\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 106 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated PG-13 (peril, violent content, bloody images, some strong language, thematic content)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Brian Duffield\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Brian Duffield and Daniel Kraus\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Joseph Trapanese\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Aaron Morton\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: October 16, 2026 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Austin Abrams, Josh Brolin, Elisabeth Shue, John Ortiz, Jane Levy, Emily Rudd. Rating: *** […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":15176,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[41],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15175","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-now-playing"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/Whalefall-POSTER.jpg?fit=620%2C918&ssl=1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15175","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15175"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15175\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15180,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15175\/revisions\/15180"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15176"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15175"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15175"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15175"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}