Review: ‘Whalefall’ is ‘Die Hard’ inside a whale and it somehow works

Making a movie set inside a whale is setting yourself up for failure. Sure, you could go fantasy with it like Pinocchio, but the fleshy, cramped, dark, and slimy reality of actually being inside a whale presents some fairly obvious cinematographic hurdles.

On top of that, the inside of a whale isn’t generally a social place, so our hero is on his own. There’s not even phone reception! Even if there were someone to talk to, our unfortunate diver must keep a Scuba regulator in his mouth at all times to breathe, rendering much of his dialogue inaudible.

And yet, incredibly, Whalefall works. Director Brian Duffield, writer of 2023’s Cocaine Bear, adapts Daniel Kraus’ 2023 novel of the same name with aplomb, and more than delivers on the trailer’s promise of watching a man MacGyver his way out of a sperm whale.

Somehow this all feels plausible

Duffield wastes no time getting Austin Abrams’ Jay inside the whale and keeps him there for the vast majority of the movie. Sure, there are flashbacks to past events while inside the whale, but Duffield is well aware that your butt is in this theater seat to watch a man stuck in a whale, and he’s more than willing to deliver.

Fortunately, this is an unusually large whale and there’s a lot to do inside it. I’m not going to get into spoilers, but simple cetacean biology dictates that there are two (maybe three) orifices that a man could feasibly escape from a whale through: the mouth, the anus, and possibly the blowhole. All avenues and methods of escape are explored, and our lead’s logical approach keeps this wild story grounded.

Whalefall also appears to take direct inspiration from Die Hard, with Jay as John McClane and a sperm whale as Nakatomi Plaza. There’s no squad of Eurotrash terrorists taking over the whale (possibly an idea for Whalefall II? Mr Duffield, feel free to get in touch), but the movie echoes McClane losing his shoes and being injured by broken glass, McClane frantically trying to alert the cops and being ignored, and McClane crawling through a cramped ventilation shaft holding a lighter in front of him.

If you want to really stretch this comparison, there’s even sort of a Sergeant Al Powell character in Whalefall in the form of a helpful jellyfish. I mean, they’re both linked to flashing blue lights…

And, just as Die Hard rests on Bruce Willis’ everyman charisma, so too does Whalefall rest on Austin Abrams. Hot off the excellent Resident Evil, Abrams’ performance more than captures the see-sawing emotional rollercoaster of someone despairing that they are inside a whale and will definitely die, through to having some brief hope of escape, then having that hope squashed (while also being actually squashed). Rinse and repeat. All that, and he delivers a lot of his dialogue through a Scuba regulator. Hats off to Abrams for not only making this work, but for enduring what I suspect wasn’t the most comfortable shoot.

A little less well-served is Josh Brolin as Jay’s dad Mitt, who’s both the emotional core of the movie and also (in flashback) an exposition machine of suddenly extremely relevant whale facts. It’s not that Brolin is necessarily bad at playing a grizzled and salty sea dog covered in tattoos of sharks and anchors and so on, it’s more that Mitt’s dialogue often gets worryingly close to the Sea Captain from The Simpsons.

Jay’s fractious relationship with Mitt is ultimately what the movie is about and Whalefall isn’t remotely shy about beating you over the head with the symbolic parallels between this scarred, gruff, larger-than-life, ocean-obsessed dad and the scarred, hungry, diver-eating whale. Subtle it ain’t. But subtle is not necessary in a movie about a man trying to escape from inside a whale.

Whalefall unashamedly embraces its ludicrous premise, is genuinely tense and thrilling, has a great central performance from Austin Abrams, makes this bizarre situation feel somewhat plausible (marine biologists may have some quibbles), and is surprisingly visually lush. This is almost certainly the best possible movie that could be made about a man stuck inside a whale.