First, he goes off to Raccoon City to make a medical delivery, only to get attacked by an undead woman, terrorized by zombie dogs, chased by mutant babies, and then forced to try to survive a T-Virus infection long enough to develop and ingest the antidote.
asserted
he → go → antidote
And now we find him trapped in the belly of a whale, a modern-day Jonah (or maybe Pinocchio).
asserted
him → find → whale
Turns out, a whale’s tummy is not a giant cavern where you sit on a raft and wait in the placid water for the beast to spit you out.
asserted
beast → turn → you
Not much fun, the inside of a whale, particularly when you’re trapped in it with a pissed-off giant squid that pulled you inside in a desperate effort to escape its fate.
asserted
that → trap → fate
It’s like one of Jigsaw’s traps from the Saw series—but alive.
asserted
It → ’ → series
How much abuse can one man take before he just gives up . . . or fights his way out?
asserted
he → take → way
I’ve spackled a protective patina of irony onto the top of this review because Whalefall is, to its credit, almost goofily earnest in places.
asserted
Whalefall → spackle → places
This is only nominally a movie about a man swallowed and half-digested by a whale: Like the 2023 Daniel Kraus novel on which it is based, it’s actually about fathers and sons.
asserted
it → swallow → fathers
In the opening moments, we watch as Mitt Gardiner (Josh Brolin) struggles to breathe on a boat.
asserted
Gardiner → watch → boat
He’s drowning in the open air, lungs crippled by mesothelioma.
asserted
He → drown → mesothelioma
The longtime diver silently decides that if he’s going to drown, he might as well do it in his beloved water, and dives in.
uncertain
he → decide → water
Abrams plays Jay Gardiner, Mitt’s son, who has not handled his father’s death well.
asserted
who → play → death
He’s decided that now, a year later, is a perfect time to make a dive where the bones may be located in an effort to recover some piece of his father’s remains.
uncertain
bones → decide → remains
This is where our Jonah finds his whale and the squid the whale wants to snack on; moments later, he’s inside the whale and trying to figure out how to survive.
asserted
he → find → whale
The physical torture Jay endures is intercut with the mental torture his father put him through.
asserted
father → endure → him
Wanted to teach him how to survive in a world of predators, wanted him to be self-sufficient in case he found himself in trouble.
asserted
himself → want → trouble
Scuba diving is no joke, the sort of thing where one simple mistake means you die horribly.
asserted
you → mean → thing
(See also: spelunking, another “hobby” you couldn’t force me to partake in at gunpoint.)
asserted
you → see → gunpoint
Mitt has regrets.
asserted
Mitt → have → regrets
So does Jay.
asserted
Jay → do → ?
And I won’t spoil how the two work through their regrets except to say that it involves a serious case of nitrogen narcosis and the sort of heartfelt back-and-forth that is either going to leave you howling at the screen or blinking back tears while you think of your own kids or your own parents.
asserted
you → spoil → kids
I’m in the second camp (kids: they’ve ruined me), though I fear for anyone who sees this movie in a theater filled with the first sort of respondent.
asserted
who → ’m → respondent
And there will, sadly, be that variety of cackling jackass, unable to bear a moment of sincerity in a public setting, extravagantly giggling when things get a bit goofy.
asserted
things → cackle → setting
That said: The goofiness got to me and it might get to you as well.
uncertain
it → say → you
Whalefall is not for the weak of stomach: I do not reference the Saw series lightly, and there are definite moments of torture-porn-adjacent mutilations in this movie.
asserted
I → reference → movie
It’s not quite as claustrophobic as Thirteen Lives (Ron Howard’s incredibly underrated movie about the Thai cave rescue), but it’s close, and for much the same reason: There’s something inherently terrifying about any situation in which you have to jam an oxygen tube in your mouth to survive.
asserted
you → ’ → mouth
I’m sorry, you simply should never willingly be in a place where you need a machine to breathe, be it a waterlogged cave or the ocean depths or a whale’s methane-filled stomach.
asserted
it → ’m → machine
I mentioned Abrams’s odd month onscreen up top, but it’s worth noting that Josh Brolin has done the grizzled mentor thing quite nicely in a similar stretch, first in The Dog Stars and now here.
asserted
Brolin → mention → Stars
It’s a role he’s well suited for, having gracefully aged into a kind of craggy-and-shaggy no-BS sensibility.
asserted
he → ’ → sensibility
The Aporia
