Whalefall: Movie Review

Cast: Austin Abrams, Josh Brolin, Elisabeth Shue, Jane Levy, John Ortiz
Director: Brian Duffield

Based on Daniel Kraus' best-selling book, Whalefall wants desperately to be a whale tale about the claustrophobic nature of grief and guilt.

However, this story of Jay (Resident Evil's Abrams) who becomes trapped inside the belly of a whale while diving to find his cancer-ridden father's remains falters in parts as it foregoes some of the tenser parts for a series of flashbacks that heavily signpost what's due to happen in a truly unsubtle way.

So while some of that may be an issue in terms of the original source material, the film appears to adhere to plumbing the depths of an emotionally bereft rollercoaster of a series of allegories and trite life lessons being imparted in a sentimental overload as the film's final sequences play out.

(It can't be a coincidence that the character is called Jay and is trapped in a whale - the fact it doesn't even deviate from the Jonah and the Whale allegory is perhaps one of the film's failings.)

There's little to the film except for a one-line synopsis - and while Duffield tries to load the emotional bases up with flashbacks between estranged father and son, some of those actually stymy proceedings and leave you feeling manipulated.

While the belly of the beast is meant to be claustrophobic, unfortunately the trapping in the whale is perhaps the most exciting part of the film, one that captures the scale of Jay against this gargantuan creature as he becomes caught up in a fight between squid and whale for food.

Once inside the beast, with only an hour's oxygen left, the film follows a somewhat formulaic route of having Jay being crushed, rolled about and tossed around both by the creature and also his memories of his father.

For what it's worth, Abrams does brilliantly with the one-man physical role, commanding the screen for the entire time he's on it. While most of his scenes see Jay forced to scream or wail through his oxygen mask, Abrams proves to be incredibly tactile as he clambers around the clearly-meant-be-claustrophobic insides of the beast. He even mines some humour out of an encounter with a phosphorous jellyfish that is fashioned into a light.

But at no real point does the film escape its own metaphor - that Jay is being crushed from the outside by the guilt within. And at no moment in the film does Duffield do anything to move that film away from such laudable but obvious intentions. It coalesces into a final sequence that's more laughable than cathartic, a sign that the only blubber on this cinematic whale will come from audiences willing to let themselves be so obviously manipulated.

Whalefall has its moments when it works - from the dark, murky waters to Abrams' scintillating physicality fashioned from so little. And its soundtrack which captures the underwater menace is as immersive as it can and should be.

But with an overload of trite messaging bogging it down in the end, Whalefall sadly sinks to the bottom of the cinematic ocean, when it should rise triumphantly from the waters.