PLOT: A diver (Austin Abrams) looking for his dead father’s remains finds himself trapped inside a sperm whale, with only an hour of oxygen remaining for him to use in his escape.
REVIEW: Whalefall is nothing if not unique. I’ve certainly never seen a movie where a character spends an entire film trying not to be digested, but Whalefall is actually an adaptation of the well-received novel by Daniel Kraus, who also co-wrote the screenplay. On the page, I imagine Whalefall worked tremendously well, but it’s hard to make a movie where a character spends the entire time in a tiny enclosed space, without any real dialogue (save for the main character’s muffled screams), compelling. At times, Whalefall succeeds, but it also struggles to maintain a sense of forward momentum, with it falling prey to more than a few cheesy moments.
That it works as well as it does is a testament to director Brian Duffield’s flair behind the camera and Austin Abrams’ performance. The latter is rising fast off the back of Resident Evil, and he makes for a solid everyman here once again. He seems like a regular kid in both movies, and you buy the character’s central trauma — that he has an unresolved relationship with his dead father, played in flashbacks by Josh Brolin.
Brolin, who is well cast, plays his father as something of a tyrant — at least to his son. Everyone loves him, especially his fellow divers, while his wife (Elisabeth Shue) and daughters (Jane Levy and Emily Rudd in small roles) adore him. But they weren’t his son, with the boy on the receiving end of his father’s constant demands and expectations. He’s not shown to be physically abusive, but he is emotionally abusive, and the movie never skirts around this issue — even if it acknowledges there was a lot to admire about the complicated man, too.
Brolin plays him in direct opposition to the meek everyman that Abrams is, with him more of a larger-than-life sort who leaves very little room for anyone else to have their say. In the movie’s opening scene, the terminally ill father commits suicide by going on one last dive, and his son, seeking to somehow resolve their relationship, tries to find his body — leading to his current predicament.
Lest an hour in real time be too much time to spend in a whale’s mouth, Duffield does sprinkle in plenty of flashbacks, and I found these moments, with Abrams and Brolin, far more effective than what was going on in the whale. Many likely won’t be able to swallow (pun intended) the unusual and unlikely premise, but even if you go with it, it becomes somewhat tedious and repetitive after a while. That said, Duffield keeps the movie visually interesting — if unrealistic — by having the water in the whale’s mouth glow blue, while the dangerous stomach acid that tries to digest our hero glows a menacing red. Obviously, this is artistic license, but at least it makes the film look cool.
Whalefall already seems to be polarizing critics, with some not being able to get past the premise while others think its novel approach is invigorating. I’m on neither side of the fence. The premise — while hard to swallow (I need to stop using this metaphor for this movie) — is cool, but I think it would have been better as maybe a forty-minute piece of episodic TV than an entire feature. In some ways, it reminded me a bit of a classic Magnum, P.I. episode where Magnum has to tread water for an entire episode while reflecting on his relationship with his dad. To me, that was more compelling because by the time the premise wore itself out, the episode was over. Whalefall runs close to two hours, and by hour two, my attention was starting to wane. Even still, it’s a decent enough effort.
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