Resident Evil star Austin Abrams gets trapped inside a whale’s belly in Brian Duffield’s thriller. Here’s our Whalefall review: Austin Abrams is having a busy autumn. He’s just earned rave reviews – including ours – for Zach Cregger’s Resident Evil, a film he spent mostly in a blind panic, running away from zombified humans. Now, ... Whalefall review | A whale of a time or a belly flop?
Resident Evil star Austin Abrams gets trapped inside a whale’s belly in Brian Duffield’s thriller. Here’s our Whalefall review:
Austin Abrams is having a busy autumn. He’s just earned rave reviews – including ours – for Zach Cregger’s Resident Evil, a film he spent mostly in a blind panic, running away from zombified humans. Now, the actor finds himself in blind panic inside a whale’s stomach.
As you do.
Here, Abrams plays Jay, a scuba driver with a complicated relationship with his late father, Mitt (Josh Brolin). Jay is determined to retrieve his father’s remains from the depths of the ocean, but unfortunately, the big blue is full of creatures that will eat you – which is exactly what happens to Jay. He has an hour to get himself out of the belly of a sperm whale before he runs out of air is the basic setup.
Trying to find your way out of a marine mammal’s digestive tract, it turns out, also provides the perfect opportunity to come to terms with your difficult paternal relationship. Meanwhile, stomach acid starts burning your hands and methane stops you from breathing.
Whalefall is a simple film. It presents its protagonist with one – arguably not so simple – task and follows him, mostly in very tight close-ups, as he tries to work each individual problem facing him. Deal with immediate injury, find light, figure out how to use a random sock to your advantage. (Spoiler alert: that sock is very useful.)
From the beginning, director Brian Duffield (director of the terrific No One Will Save You) establishes just how dangerous and enormous the ocean is, even in all of its beauty. It helps that Abrams is a relatively small physical presence against the vastness of the ocean, and the actor keeps the film alive even when things are starting to feel a bit stale. Whalefall isn’t particularly funny, and sustaining the tension for the film’s 106-minute runtime is tricky, but Duffield smartly keeps the camera tightly on Abrams’ face and trusts him to do the heavy lifting, aided by a terrific score by Joseph Trapanese.
The special effects here are marvellous, too. The whale’s stomach is realised excitingly; never have a whale’s tongue or innards looked so realistic on screen – and we don’t even have David Attenborough’s soothing voice accompanying them. Additionally, if you’re not a fan of tight spaces, Whalefall will likely feel even more tense.
As things progress, Whalefall begins to slow down. Each scene starts to resemble the one that came before, and its final third veers into sentimentality and a finale that offers few surprises. Brolin uses the same deep voice that made Thanos such a memorable villain in the MCU, but Mitt never feels like a three-dimensional character in the past or present, which severely hurts the film’s emotional core.
Ultimately, Whalefall is about digestion and grief. It’s a combination that mostly works, but a film should advance similarly to a heartbeat on a hospital monitor: there needs to be ups and downs. If it’s all one steady line, that means you’re dead – and every now and again, Whalefall threatens to flatline entirely. Thankfully, Abrams is on hand to shock the film back to life when needed.
Whalefall is in cinemas 16th October.
