Whalefall, directed by Brian Duffield (No One Will Save You), follows the story of Jay Gardiner, played by Austin Abrams (Resident Evil, Weapons), as he searches for the remains of his father, Mitt, played by Josh Brolin (The Dog Stars, Weapons). Jay embarks on his dive with nothing but an hour’s worth of air and a lifetime full of insecurities fostered by his father. As he’s searching for Mitt, he is swallowed by a whale and has to escape. The film opens on Mitt’s face in the sunlight, waves lapping at the boat as coughs rattle his chest. These moments of sunshine are few and far between, as most of the film’s 116 minute runtime is spent in low, blue lighting in the belly of the whale as Jay is being physically and emotionally swallowed by his grief.
It’s part survival movie, part thriller, and part family drama, as we witness Jay process his complex emotions as he fights to stay alive. In doing so, Austin Abrams is once again tasked with carrying a movie on his shoulders with very few other people on screen for large chunks of time. But this time he’s aided by heavy voiceover from Brolin and flashbacks featuring the larger cast. These flashbacks and voiceovers are carried over from the structure of the book, but don’t translate as well to the screen. .
It raises the eternal question of what’s important in an adaptation, and the effectiveness of certain narrative elements in different forms of media. Reading a book is inherently an act of contemplation. You’re forced to sit with the author’s words, arranging them in a way that makes sense to you, visualizing in a way that only you can. The voices of the characters exist only in your head, and so much more can be communicated about their internal lives, especially in a story written from a first-person perspective. To carry an internal monologue fully to the screen would require extensive voiceover, or someone talking to themselves for the entire movie. This rarely works. Instead, movies rely on visual elements to try to communicate the internal lives of their characters.
Whalefall is not subtle in its communication. The flashbacks are heavy-handed, leaving no room for ambiguity regarding how Jay feels about his dad, which effectively flattens Josh Brolin’s Mitt to a one-dimensional angry father, only there to be disappointed in himself and in his son. His presence on screen is almost entirely limited to yelling at Jay, or yelling into the void about tourists and capitalism. His only other work in the film is the breathy voiceover that’s deployed to encourage Jay as he tries to escape the whale, consistently reminding him of things like “the ocean always provides” and to “breathe sleepy.”
Where Whalefall shines is in the belly of the whale, when Abrams is the only figure on the screen. Duffield managed to harness the unique power of Abrams in an extreme circumstance—Abrams has been dubbed a “scream king” by the internet, and rightfully so. He somehow is able to scream at the top of his lungs convincingly without ever letting go of the mouthpiece that’s keeping him alive. It really cannot be overstated how talented he is, and I can’t wait to see what’s next for him.
It also helps that the whale was built practically, with only a tiny crew on set, and Abrams in his wetsuit with a few glowsticks inside the life-sized stomach chambers. The team in charge of effects effectively capture how violent the inside of a body can be, with Jay being tossed around, struggling to keep his hold on his respirator, trying to protect his head, and avoiding the other prey within the stomach. During his time in the whale, Jay is beat up, slammed around, cut, stung, and partially dissolved by stomach acid. It is gooey and sticky and crunchy. In these moments, the power of Daniel Kraus’s writing shined through—passages from the book were flashing through my mind as the scenes played out.
Having those passages from the book for context was really the only thing that saved some of the shots toward the end of the movie, where the film backs away from the practical effects from inside the whale to heavier CGI outside of the whale. The external body shots of the whale and the highly stylized flashbacks, which deploy modified anamorphic lenses to communicate that they are, in fact, flashbacks (an unnecessary choice that discredits the intelligence of the audience), undo any of the potential tension that could have built during the actual action of the movie. During what could be the emotional climax of the film, the ugly CGI diminished any of the sadness or profound grief I experienced while reading the book.
Despite these shortcomings, the film is an examination of the ways we love, the ways we grieve, and the parts of us that remain when we’re gone, tangibly and intangibly. Just as the conditions weren’t ideal for Jay to dive (the waves were choppy, the beach he tried to dive from was closed because of a pack of orcas in the area), the conditions are never fully right for us to grieve. But when we lose someone we love, there is no existence without that grief. We are also forced to contend with whose wishes matter most after death, those of the dead, or those of the ones they leave behind? There’s an inherent tension within the story of Whalefall between Mitt’s wishes to die at sea, with his body surrendered to nature, like the body of a whale, which then sparks an entire ecosystem from its rotting flesh, and Jay’s wishes to be useful to his family and recover the body of his father. But the film doesn’t actually explore this tension, or even acknowledge it.
I firmly believe that an adaptation and its source material should be able to stand on their own, each their own piece of art, not relying on the other to explain or support the story. You should be able to watch a movie without reading the book and be fully able to understand what the story is about and what it’s trying to communicate. You should similarly be able to read the book and not need the movie to expand upon what you read. On its own, Whalefall the film is a middle-of-the-road studio film that has some great moments, but ultimately falls flat. I would encourage anyone who even remotely enjoyed the movie to read the book to help breathe air back into the lungs of the story, resuscitating the elements that died upon exiting the page and entering the screen.
