Whalefall Teases A Survival Thriller Of Biblical Proportions
Resident Evil’s Austin Abrams gets into yet more peril.
The deep blue sea has always been frightening enough on its own, but Hollywood filmmaking has done its part to make it all the more terrifying. The number of movies that have explored the horrors lurking in the depths could probably fill the Mariana Trench: our fascination with the sea predates the medium, but film took the obsession at play since Herman Melville’s time and made hay. The subgenre has everything, from ridiculous sci-fi fantasy (the genius sharks of Deep Blue Sea; the cosmic entity of Underwater) to simpler, more plausible, and equally terrifying horrors (open water, or the body-crushing pressure of the ocean floor).
Ocean horror has delivered plenty of hits in its century-spanning history, but it’s also been around for so long that fresh ideas seem to have slipped off the hook. How many times can we watch a riff on Jaws without thinking, “Not this again”? How many more scrappy survival horrors can Hollywood produce before the genre cannibalizes itself? It’s long been synonymous with salacious, sometimes-trashy horror, but Whalefall — an unbelievably claustrophobic new thriller — is poised to bring its potential back to the surface.
Ironically, Whalefall is cribbing from one of the oldest deep-sea fables in history — the story of Jonah and the whale. Resident Evil’s Austin Abrams is this film’s Jonah: he plays Jay, a diver who’s headed into the ocean to find his father’s (Josh Brolin) remains. What begins as a slightly risky soul-searching trip becomes the stuff of nightmares when he’s ensnared in the tentacles of a giant squid... and that squid is immediately swallowed by an oblivious sperm whale.
It’s worth noting that sperm whales have four stomach chambers, which should buy Jay a little bit of time before he becomes the creature’s amuse-bouche. But Jay also only has one hour of oxygen left in his tank, so if he wants to make it out alive, he’ll have to work fast and rely on his dad’s survival lessons.
Whalefall is based on the novel of the same name by Daniel Kraus, and it’s been described a bit like The Martian... just underwater. Real-world science will play a major role in Jay’s survival, and it might also give this film the credibility to rise above its wilder elements. Suspension of disbelief is a common requirement for this brand of filmmaking, but Whalefall is stripping things way back — and in the process, reclaiming the raw terror of the sea.
