Whalefall Review: Abrams Battles Grief Inside a Whale — SkimNews
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- Whalefall, written and directed by Brian Duffield, adapts Daniel Kraus' 2023 novel into a survival/body horror releasing October 16, 2026 via 20th Century Studios, rated PG-13 with a 1 hr 46 min runtime.
- Austin Abrams plays Jay, who dives into the Pacific to recover the remains of his father Mitt (Josh Brolin), who died by suicide amid a terminal illness; the plot kicks in when Jay and a giant squid are swallowed by a sperm whale, leaving him roughly an hour of oxygen to escape.
- Production designer Ramsey Avery built the whale's innards as practical sets lit with bioluminescence, while cinematographer Aaron Morton captured California's coastlines and underwater sequences with support from the state's Film and Television Tax Credit Program.
- The supporting cast includes Elisabeth Shue, John Ortiz, Jane Levy, and Emily Rudd, with the reviewer praising Abrams and Brolin's 'gutsy performances' while flagging the father-son dynamic as sometimes 'drowned in melodrama' and noting that Mitt is 'somewhat conveniently prepared' for the whale-stomach scenario.
- The reviewer draws parallels to Tom Hanks befriending Wilson in Castaway (via a quippy jellyfish companion) and the alien abduction sequence in Jordan Peele's Nope (2022), singling out Brolin's 'ridiculously on-the-nose' delivery of the titular phrase 'That's called whale fall.'
Why it matters: The film cements Austin Abrams as a potential 'scream king' while leaning on California's tax credit program to deliver a practically built, bioluminescent whale-stomach set — a craft-first approach that positions 20th Century Studios' PG-13 genre entry (October 16, 2026) to reach both gore audiences and prestige-horror viewers who responded to Peele's Nope.
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