What is Whalefall? Is it an existential meditation on the state of nature and family? Is it an intense body horror that never pulls a punch? Is it the fever dream of a slowly dying man on the brink of madness? Is it the poignant vision of what it means to undergo a religious experience? Is it a campy, hilarious thriller about a man and his whale? Somehow Whalefall is, by turns, all of these things and more. And yet, its dedication to the earnest experience of its many different aspects means they all fall together in a way that is just so crazy it makes sense. Whalefall is the sum of every one of its wonderfully wild parts and somehow so much more than any one of them individually. We knew from the trailer that Whalefall would be a journey, but nothing can truly prepare you for the full experience of this movie. (COMPLIMENTARY.)
When describing Whalefall to those around me after my screening, I called it an epic roller coaster of a movie. I got on the ride knowing it would take me on hills and drops, but had no idea what shape they would form. And Whalefall certainly took me to more unexpected places than any movie I have ever before seen. It’s a roller coaster that made me laugh, scream, shake my fist, and sit in total rapturous awe.
As I mention at the top of this piece, Whalefall is a genre-defying film that carves out a space all its own. If I had to give it just one label, I might call it the height of absurdist cinema, where absurdism is defined in its most philosophical way. In an irrational, meaningless world, the fight to understand existence and purpose persists. And though the question of sense and meaning cannot always be answered, in the end, we can only laugh and do our best. In the end, we can only fight to survive and surf the waves of our lives… Whatever they are.
I bet you didn’t expect THAT from a Whalefall review. And doesn’t that fully make the point?
Only in Whalefall can the horrific intricacies of what it’s like to be menaced by an evil squid after being swallowed by a whale sit side by side with the question of how messed up exactly your relationship with your father is. Only Whalefall will let you enjoy a Disney princess-like friendship between a man and an adorable bioluminescent jellyfish friend after watching said man burn his body in whale stomach acid. Whalefall brought me to places where the most intense horror movie never took me, and then made me sigh gently at the beauty of its underwater cinematography and vision of the human condition. The movie never shied away from its various extremes of pain, ugly crying, joy, and more. And that makes it somehow relatable despite its undeniable surrealism.
In theory, Whalefall is a thriller about a son searching for his father’s remains who has an hour to escape the stomach of a whale.
But, in practice, I suppose in the end, Whalefall is a movie about nature. Human nature. Wild nature. And the nature of the self. It’s also a movie where the main character announces, “I’m gonna make it puke me out!!”
Speaking of the main character, full kudos to Austin Abrams as Jay Gardiner, who does most of his acting with his face hidden by a scuba mask and his voice muffled by a mouthpiece… side by side with his scene partner… The innards of a whale. With his eyes, physicality, and a handful of well-chosen lines, Abrams conveys the whole gamut of human emotion. And there’s one moment where Jay finds himself one with the whale, literally snuggling its insides, that is so incredibly tender it’s hard to believe. I mentioned already, but Abrams’ sequences with his jellyfish friend are also so unbelievably human and sweet; they’re absolutely glorious.
Josh Brolin, too, brings his A-game… both as Jay’s difficult father and as other characters we won’t spoil. The movie is framed by flashback scenes of Jay and Brolin’s Mitt and offer us a very raw and familiar vision of difficult parental relationships. I appreciate the closure that Jay is able to find with his father and also the lack of it. A different movie might have been tempted to tie everything neatly with a bow, but Whalefall simply lets the jagged edges lie.
I also greatly enjoyed the gorgeous, haunting visions of the ocean’s depths. (Juxtaposed, of course, with the gloopy intestines of a whale.) The well-timed moments of levity were also a plus, and they kept the movie from feeling like it was taking itself too seriously at any point—a necessary thing when a conceit is a bit ridiculous. At certain points, the movie veered into segments of pure camp and I welcomed those in among the terrors.
Whalefall was a wonderful journey, unexpected at every turn. Do I fully know what to make of it? Not totally. But I enjoyed every minute of it. And long after the credits have rolled, I’m still pondering its many depths. Having been swallowed whole and swum back to the surface, I feel a renewed desire to fight for every minute of my own wild, ever-changing existence. And is there really any more you can ask from a cinematic experience?
Whalefall will release in theaters on October 16.