I remember seeing the trailer/extended look for Whalefall at CinemaCon 2026, and to say that I was anxious after seeing it is an understatement. It showed the early. but pivotal scene where Jay (played by Austin Abrams) gets swallowed by the titular whale. I’m not usually the type to tense up and feel that blood pressure rise during a movie, but this time around, the combo of claustrophobic environment and the horrors of the deep sea was too much. Fast forward to now and I’ve seen all of Whalefall. Was it the deep sea house of horrors that I was expecting?
No it wasn’t. It was much more than that. This is the story of Jay, who’s father, Mitt (played by Josh Brolin) has recently passed away. He’s back from college in Iowa to grieve and mourn his father with his family, his mom (Elisabeth Shue), and two sisters (Jane Levy and Emily Rudd). His father had cancer and chose to end his life where he loved, in the ocean. Jay gets the idea to dive and search for his remains. From there, the entire shocking scene of a squid being eaten by a whale that also grabs Jay, leading to him being swallowed by the whale.
This scene is fairly pivotal and sets up the entire film, so I’ll dive a bit deeper into it.
If you really don’t like close quarters/claustrophobic scenes, Whalefall is a no-go. Most of the movie is spent inside of a whale with everything that entails. Even from before the squid/whale attack, the movie has a sense of the dread that we all know is coming. The deep sea is terrifying and that translates to the deep parts of a whale’s insides. Luckily, the whale terror is broken up by flashbacks to Jay and his father.
These flashbacks are really the meat of the film and give it the emotional resonance that I wasn’t expecting. To be completely honest, I was just expecting this to be a silly movie about a guy getting swallowed by a whale, the terror of that for 80-90 minutes, and that’s it. But this emotional aspect of it gives the film so much more. Brolin is amazing as Mitt. He’s a gruff, tough, and flawed father. Jay gets the manly-man treatment by his dad and it’s clear that he resents him for it. Like a lot of people, relationships are flawed and not perfect.
It really is the emotional center of the film and in its third act, it comes full circle. There’s a lot here regarding themes. There’s all the sins of the father stuff but there’s also themes about environmental conservation and preservation. If anything, Whalefall will make you fall back in love with whales.
There are a couple of things about Whalefall that I do feel like would have added a bit more to the proceedings. Either the film needed to cut out like 5-10 minutes in the middle or they needed to expand a bit on his family, particularly his mom and sisters. They’re in the film, they don’t really add or detract anything from it. His sisters are mainly there to show that Jay was the apple of his father’s eye, even through all of the tough treatment. It does feel like there’s a bit more to them that we don’t see but it doesn’t detract from the movie that much.
Austin Abrams shows just how much of a star he is in this movie though. He’s inside a whale the entire time. He makes friends with a jellyfish (which ends up being a cute part of the film in the midst of a whale stomach terror). The relatability is off the charts. Like in Resident Evil, he makes the terror on screen feel like something we’ve all been through with his mannerisms and performance. He gets put through the wringer too, gettting absolutely messed up in multiple ways by the innards of a whale and what else resides there. This is a true star-cementing performance.
This really is Jay’s story about his relationship with his father, though. It might be horrifying, it might be scary, but there’s a lot to learn from Whalefall. Which is what surprised me the most. If you can get through all of the terror, you reach a movie that honestly made me tear up from the emotional upwelling. There’s a lot more we can learn from whales than I thought.
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