Brian Duffield is swiftly becoming a master of unspeakable horror. That’s partly because the last film he directed, “No One Will Save You,” was a terrifying alien invasion story with practically zero dialogue. More importantly, he has a shrewd understanding of how small we all are, and how unthinkable it is to be confronted with unknowable entities that neither hate nor fear us. It’s somehow worse when they think of us as less than nothing. Like a drone to be collected for their personal hive or, in his new movie “Whalefall,” a scrap of meat lodged between their teeth.
We all know what it’s like to get stuck inside a whale, because Walt Disney’s “Pinocchio” told us it wasn’t so bad. It’s demoralizing, but you can live quite comfortably in the giant hollow of a whale’s belly, fishing for sustenance and, I dunno, probably catching up on your reading? The Monstro sequence in “Pinocchio” terrified a lot of children, myself included, but in “Whalefall” we learn that it was the sanitized, family-friendly version. Yikes.
If you’re actually eaten by a sperm whale, like a young scuba diver named Jay (Austin Abrams) does in “Whalefall,” it isn’t just scary, and it sure as hell isn’t tranquil. It’s exceedingly gross. Jay is exploring the ocean floor off the coast of his childhood home, searching for the corpse of his drowned father Mitt (Josh Brolin), when he stumbles into the path of a sperm whale and a giant squid, locked in a life or death struggle. The whale swallows the squid whole, but the squid pulls Jay in as well. Now he’s stuck there, fighting a giant squid inside a gargantuan gullet and trying not to get dissolved by the whale’s stomach acid.
Oh yeah, and Jay has less than one hour of oxygen in his tank. That’s not long enough for a feature film — not in this day and age, anyway — so “Whalefall” keeps flashing back to the protagonist’s strained relationship with his father. Mitt wanted to prepare Jay to survive in a brutal world, and luckily for Jay almost all of Mitt’s advice is directly relevant to surviving in a sperm whale’s stomach. It’s kind of like “Slumdog Millionaire” if instead of the hero remembering all the unlikely reasons he knows the answers to the questions on a game show, he’s remembering all the useful things you can do with various random objects — which, by coincidence, also happen to be in the whale’s stomach that day.
You could complain that “Whalefall” — based on the award-winning novel by Daniel Kraus, who co-wrote the script with Duffield — is full of implausible contrivances. Then again, you could also remember that you came here to watch a guy crawl his way out of a whale while fighting a giant squid, and there are only so many ways the filmmakers can give him a fighting chance. That’s not to say the critique is unfounded. Nobody in their right mind would say anything that happens in “Whalefall” is plausible, but the implausibility is inherent to the premise and the premise is rad as hell. Brian Duffield is 100% committed to the bit, which makes “Whalefall” a wild ride.
It’s also an incredibly weird ride. The first two acts are outlandish but the third strains credulity. As Jay starts running on fumes, literally, the film takes on a surreal dimension. The world of his flashbacks collide with his unthinkable new reality, in a way which is either deeply profound or a bridge too far. If this is where you reject “Whalefall” I will understand. I’d venture to say that even Duffield and Kraus would probably understand. But again, they’re committed to this thing. If you trust them, you’ll find their bonkers finale exhilarating, if not as an epic spectacle then at least as a risky storytelling choice.
“Whalefall” is a squishy film. Austin Abrams spends most of it inside a claustrophobic, Cronenbergian crevasse comprised of lumpy flesh and fluorescent fluids. It’s the second film in as many months where Abrams struggles to survive overwhelming bodily horror whilst wrestling with his internalized daddy issues. If Hollywood is looking for the next hit formula, I guess this is it. “Resident Evil” and “Whalefall” are both odd and electrifying studio movies from filmmakers with an in-your-face approach to over the top ideas.
Abrams is phenomenal in both, playing characters whose emotional vulnerability and questionable confidence can only be overcome — with varying degrees of success — by old-fashioned stick-to-it-iveness. I look forward to finding out what gross patriarchal nightmare he’ll have to endure in November. Maybe he’ll get stuck inside a giant vat of turkey gizzards on his way home for Thanksgiving. Call it “Wishbone” and rake in the cash.
“Whalefall” is a strange and fantastic film. If you weren’t crying real tears you’d be laughing at the screen. Brian Duffield deserves credit for capturing the immense scale of this freakish nightmare, and for doggedly following the story to its bizarre conclusion. Because, eventually, it no longer matters if “Whalefall” makes sense; it matters if it makes us feel — and it does. It makes us excited and afraid. It makes us grieve and regret. That’s what talented filmmakers do, even with ludicrous material. Duffield has talent. Abrams has talent. Pod damn it, no one can claim their success is a fluke.
