Whalefall sees a scuba diver swallowed whole by his daddy issues

It’s also a literary drama, adapted by original author Daniel Kraus and Duffield into a mutant sea monster, one that’s half gross-out B-movie and half flashback-heavy emotional flotsam. Jay may spend most of the movie covered in ooey gooey bits, but those don’t hold a whale-blubber candle to the film’s ooeir gooier bits. This is faithful to the source, which alternates first-person chapters between Jay’s gripping present and overwrought past, now with a dumber and heavier hand befitting a studio film. The only reason Jay went diving, see, is to find the bones of his cruel father, who sunk himself to the bottom of the sea rather than allow cancer to gnaw away at him.

In life, Mitt (Josh Brolin, done up like a nautical Danny Trejo) was a pushy sea dog. His hippie talk was encrusted with a thick coat of masculine brine and his driving purpose seemed to be browbeating his scrawny landlubber son at every opportunity. After he finally drove Jay off for good, his sickness took a turn. Jay never saw him again, much to the chagrin of his overbearing sisters (Jane Levy, Emily Rudd), who didn’t have to put up with the same paternal expectations, and to the sad understanding of his mother (Elisabeth Shue). But the rest of Jay’s family may as well not be in Whalefall at all, because the asinine dramatic dialogue is so bad you’re thankful the hero has something in his mouth for most of the movie.

It’s not inherently bad that you can’t understand half of what Jay mumbles to himself. (It is bad that you can understand the other half, limp throwaway laugh lines and spoken-aloud revelations, so well that the difference is jarring.) When Whalefall feints at being a Martian-like survival story where Jay must make do with his diving equipment and whatever sea junk he shares this digestive tract with, it shows mad glimmers of brilliance. There’s simplicity inside the whale: One chamber is blueish, another redder and filled with yellow bile. The Anatomy Of A Whalefall is easy to understand. Ribbed mucosa walls contract, crunching and munching Jay like Play-Doh in a fist. His only goal is to get out, and he’s only got a few options. This pursuit gets complicated from without and within, whale and man both weathering plenty over the film’s drawn-out 106 minutes. Seeing this play out is enjoyably odd—Abrams clinging to a giant tongue, screaming his heart out, is a highlight—even when it becomes visually muddled in moments of intense action, which is where Jay suffers his more visceral and upsetting injuries.

But even that novelty has its limits. As Jay’s plight overstays its welcome and his practical problems give way to emotional reckonings, it’s hard to stay with Whalefall. It’s inherently ludicrous to try to find closure inside a fleshy fetish nightmare, regardless of whether a helpful jellyfish’s bioluminescence allows it to be a well-lit fleshy fetish nightmare. That the film pursues this so cloyingly, with composer Joseph Trapanese apparently paid by the swelling crescendo, bogs down its early thrills like an overweighted dive belt. It doesn’t matter how effectively Whalefall captures the eerie vastness of the abyss, or the imposing scale of its central beast, when, at every opportunity, it prioritizes the hokiest, most familiar daddy issues. This doesn’t ground Whalefall‘s ridiculous premise, but sinks it.

Director: Brian Duffield
Writer: Brian Duffield, Daniel Kraus
Starring: Austin Abrams, Josh Brolin, Elisabeth Shue
Release Date: October 16, 2026