‘Whalefall’ (2026) Review

Reading Time: 4 minutes

Let me set the scene for you: you’re trapped inside the throat of a whale with limited oxygen, broken ribs, and deepening guilt. You could be at any depth with this whale anatomy ready to crush you and swallow you as a quick meal. Would you be able to muster up the knowledge of lessons you’ve learned throughout your life and would it be enough to save you from this nightmarish situation? Or would you (like myself) be as far away from a circumstance like this as humanly possible?

While we may have the luxury of physically avoiding an intense and unexpected expedition like this, Whalefall gets us as close as we could ever want to be. A brief setup details Jay (Austin Abrams) and his family still wrestling with the loss of their father (Josh Brolin) around a year after his waterlogged suicide. Unable to legally reclaim the body from the sea and burdened by falling short of his father’s wishes, Jay decides to go out on his own into the steep drop-off cliffs of Monterey Bay Canyon to find the remains of his father.

As expected, this task proves much grander for poor Jay. A few minutes of searching along the grassy, shallow seabed leads our intrepid diver to the edge of the canyon as he overlooks the pure unknowability of that foggy sea murk. Now, movies that take place underwater don’t need anything fancy to be able to pull this primal fear out of viewers like me. Just a few seconds of that abyss is enough to bring up my deepest fears and give me heart palpitations as I gaze into that black mystery. It’s not just that it’s dark; it’s the unknown of what lies beneath that strikes such fear into our hearts. 

But Whalefall isn’t just trying to make us fear the open ocean. Director Brian Duffield, taking a cue from the novel by Daniel Kraus, uses Jay’s harrowing situation as an allegorical link to his unresolved parental baggage. Once inside the throat of the whale, trapped beyond his own comprehension, Jay’s story will often flash back to his experiences with his father before his passing. Here, it seems like Duffield just rolled camera on the real Brolin, preaching oceanic virtue with that signature gruffness of his. But it really functions as a crux for Jay, as many troubling circumstances within the whale can be related to the training he received diving and reluctantly being around his father. With the parental disapproval of his lifestyle and the perceived weakness of his actions, Jay’s struggle becomes an act of proving as much as an act of forgiving that can be surprisingly potent at times. 

Though this split allows for a window into Jay’s and his father’s dynamic, it can often turn very heavy-handed, directly linking themes in ways that feel obvious as opposed to earned. Duffield, along with Abrams and Brolin, is still able to deliver the emotional stakes, but it can feel muted with the directness of its message. It just all becomes too much backstory that works to overwhelm the intensity of the actual experience. It’s also tough when your lead often has to perform meaningful and impactful dialogue through an air regulator mouthpiece. It’s a commitment to realism, but it sure hinders any sort of emotional performance. 

However, where Whalefall and Duffield seem to be working in sync is in the actual depiction of being swallowed by a whale. As an ungraspable experience, something like this has to be seen to be believed. So, when that eight-minute stretch of Jay first encountering the whale comes, Duffield grabs you by the collar and pulls you into the depths along for the ride. This feels like a section of Saving Private Ryan’s D-Day sequence, that kind of scene that doesn’t let you breathe until it’s finally over. 

Once inside, the real fear (outside of those terrifying depths) comes in the form of cinematic claustrophobia. Reminiscent of Buried (2010) or As Above So Below (2014), it becomes hard to breathe as Jay is pushed in by the breathing and “chewing” of the whale’s internals. He’s often forced to crawl through tight, dark passages that will strain your sanity, as each next one may swallow him entirely. I can’t claim any sort of expert realism on the inner workings of a sperm whale, but how Duffield and his team have imagined this works greatly for the immersion of this insane story and alone is worth the price of admission.

So, while it may not have a perfect grasp on its emotional impact, Whalefall still manages to pull you to the edge of your seat as a one-of-a-kind survival thriller. I may steer the claustrophobic and thalassophobic crowd towards another movie, but it’s still quite a way to immerse yourselves in your fears. That is, if you’re brave enough.