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Strong performances can’t save this formulaic survival story
Whalefall, Daniel Kraus’ 2023 novel about a scuba diver swallowed by a sperm whale, is often compared to Andy Weir’s 2011 book The Martian since both focus on men trapped alone in dire situations using all of their knowledge and skills to survive. Ridley Scott and Drew Goddard’s adaptation of Weir’s story of an astronaut methodically growing potatoes on Mars is a masterpiece, filled with optimism, humor, and thrills. That success feels even more remarkable in hindsight, as Brian Duffield’s Whalefall tries to replicate the formula but never makes the physical or emotional stakes feel real.
It’s pretty bizarre that this month there are two movies where Austin Abrams plays a protagonist who makes a series of terrible decisions that lead to him getting attacked by tentacle monsters — and Resident Evil is in every way the better film. Abrams’ Whalefall character, Jay Gardiner, makes even worse choices than Resident Evil’s hapless organ courier Bryan Hodukavich, who at least had no idea how dangerous a trip to Raccoon City could be. Jay’s scuba pro dad Mitt (Josh Brolin) spent his whole life hammering home the importance of diving safety, yet Jay ignores all those lessons, along with repeated warnings from both his dad’s buddy Hewey (John Ortiz) and the Coast Guard, when he goes on an early morning solo dive. Nobody even knows Jay is missing when he winds up grappling with a giant squid that then gets eaten by a whale.
Jay’s recklessness is a symptom of his grief. The movie opens with Mitt jumping off his tour boat laden with weights so he can die in the ocean he loved rather than succumbing to mesothelioma in a hospital bed. It’s the most emotionally effective scene in the whole film, anchored by Brolin’s rasping breath as he prepares for his last dive. Hewey studiously ignores the suicide he’s assisting and focuses on fishing off the other side of the boat, before finally breaking down at the sound of the splash.
A year later, Jay still hasn’t read the note his dad left for him and can’t bring himself to visit the cemetery plot where his family buried an empty casket. Even though Mitt was very clear about his desire to nourish the ocean like a whale carcass – the eponymous whalefall – Jay is convinced that bringing back his remains will set things right.
The fraught father-son relationship mostly plays out in a series of formulaic flashbacks that perfectly fit each crisis Jay faces. Panic leaves him gasping for air, depleting his oxygen reserves, so Jay remembers that time his father taught him to make a tank last. Later, Mitt waxes philosophical about how the ocean provides as Jay gathers other items the whale swallowed to MacGyver a means of escape. The situations and highly specific lessons become more absurd as the film goes on.
Whalefall is very much not based on a true story
Kraus’ book is often marketed as The Martian meets 127 Hours, and the adaptation he co-wrote with Duffield clearly owes a lot to Danny Boyle’s 2010 drama. Both Jay and James Franco’s trapped canyoneer are motivated to survive through a mix of flashbacks and hallucinations, but 127 Hours is based on a harrowing true story. Whalefall’s VFX team built enormous practical sets to make Jay’s claustrophobic, goopy struggle feel real, but it’s still hard to take his plight seriously. At one point, he tries to climb out of the whale’s gullet using a bioluminescent jellyfish as a light source, all the while apologizing to the brainless would-be whale snack for mistreating it. That manic energy is a perfect fit for a goofy video game adaptation like Resident Evil, but it feels jarring in what is ostensibly a harrowing film about loss.
Brolin has so much experience playing deeply flawed dads that he can effortlessly exude stern disapproval. Yet despite all the flashbacks of Mitt explaining whale anatomy and behavior, his relationship with his family never feels fully developed. Mitt drove Jay away by pushing him too hard to learn all his seafaring wisdom, but he never seems to have dived with his wife or two daughters. There’s no reckoning with the sexism of this dynamic and the resentment Jay’s siblings might have felt about his special treatment. Instead the women have a rosy view of Mitt, never acknowledging how abusive he could be.
Whalefall provides meticulous instructions on how not to die while scuba diving, but it barely explains why these characters want to do it in the first place, making it even harder to find Mitt sympathetic. Whalefall has some moments of quiet beauty, like the whale coasting through dark waters or Jay swimming amongst brightly colored fish in the California kelp forest. Just a single scene of Mitt and Jay enjoying a dive together would have been helpful to explore their relationship and the world that Mitt revered.
The not so subtle metaphor of Whalefall is that Mitt is the whale who has swallowed Jay. He had to escape home to avoid being crushed under the weight of his expectations, but now he’s drowning in his grief and guilt. Maybe Whalefall could have worked as a more abstract fairy tale, a classic coming-of-age story where a son comes to understand the value of his father’s wisdom only after his passing. But trying to give real gravitas to a very silly premise while clumsily and repetitively using flashbacks to reveal key bits of information robs Whalefall of any emotional weight the story might have. Whalefall shares some of The Martian’s plot and structure, but instead of rocketing to success, it seems doomed to sink at the box office.
Whalefall releases in theaters on Oct. 16.