Whalefall Review: Your Theater's Raw Reaction Will Speak for Itself

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Posted in: 20th Century Studios, Kaitlyn Booth, Movies, Review | Tagged: Whalefall

Whalefall Review: Your Theater's Raw Reaction Will Speak for Itself

Whalefall, at its core, isn't a very complicated film, and that very much works in its favor. We are here to solve daddy issues and not get digested for the next 101 minutes - sounds great.

Published Wed, 14 Oct 2026 11:03:09 -0500
by Kaitlyn Booth
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Article Summary

  • Whalefall delivers a tense, grief-soaked survival thriller that balances visceral horror with an intimate father-son story.
  • Brian Duffield’s Whalefall uses haunting sound design and muffled underwater terror to make every moment feel suffocating.
  • Austin Abrams and Josh Brolin anchor Whalefall’s emotional flashbacks, giving the high-concept premise real weight.
  • Whalefall stumbles slightly in the third act, but its practical effects, pressure-cooker pacing, and scale make it unforgettable.

Whalefall is a harrowing journey that puts the audience through the wringer in every single way that counts, but the horror is mostly balanced by the meditation on grief, fathers, and what surviving actually entails.

Director: Brian Duffield
Summary: Follows a scuba diver who, while looking for his father's remains, is swallowed by an 80-foot, 60-ton sperm whale and has just one hour to get out before his oxygen runs out.

Photo by 20th Century Studios. © 2026 20th Century Studios. All Rights Reserved.

There are aspects of films that, when they are excellent, can elevate everything to the next level. We have noted the screams in the Whalefall footage since we first saw it back in April, and they have not left our minds since. Now that the film is out, at least we aren't suffering alone, because sound is truly one of the things Whalefall excels at. Sound is one of those things in film that you notice for two reasons. One, something is going terribly wrong and ruining the entire experience, or it is either a movie specifically about sound, or an excellent horror director is using sound to enhance a jump scare.

One could argue that Whalefall is horror, but not in the "jump out and get you" way. The sounds of Whalefall are the movement of the walls as the whale moves and attempts to digest Jay (Austin Abrams). It's the way that everything is muted as Jay is consumed by the whale, and he is screaming for his life, but he's under with a respirator around his mouth, so you can barely make out the words as he begs the whale to spare him. Jay is talking out loud after he's consumed, and again, it's muffled, so we can only half understand him. The sound design of all of it enhances this film in such a way that the visuals are bad enough, but the sounds are what are going to haunt you.

Whalefall isn't quite shot in real time, but it's pretty close. Jay has an hour of air left, and we watch him try to figure out how to use that hour of air left to figure out how the hell to get out of this thing. As the film continues, we see flashbacks to Jay's extremely contentious relationship with his father (Josh Brolin). They are awful in different ways, and Brolin and Abrams really nail that relationship that sometimes develops between sons and fathers where they cannot, for the life of either of them, figure out how to speak the same language.

If the film has any flaws, it's this narrative device, which is frustrating, because it starts off as one of the things that makes it shine. However, by the time the third act rolls around, things stumble a bit in the pacing. They aren't dealbreakers, but they make the lead-up to the finale drag a bit, and not in the way a film trying to induce a panic attack should. That being said, the dynamic between Jay and his dad, and seeing it play out over the course of his life through these flashbacks, brings this surreal experience back to Earth again before ejecting you back into the belly of the beast (literally).

The practical effects of Whalefall are insane, and we can hope that director Brian Duffield releases a lot of behind-the-scenes footage, because the sets inside the whale are insane. There is no way to fake those things, so much like Backrooms earlier this year, 20th Century knew when something needed the money and made sure we could tell how slimy those walls inside that whale looked. Immersion is the name of the game here, even if this is the last place any of us would like to be.

Austin Abrams as Jay Gardiner in 20th Century Studios' WHALEFALL. © 2026 20th Century Studios. All Rights Reserved.
(L-R): Austin Abrams as Jay Gardiner and Josh Brolin as Mitt Gardiner in 20th Century Studios' WHALEFALL. © 2026 20th Century Studios. All Rights Reserved.
Austin Abrams as Jay Gardiner in 20th Century Studios' WHALEFALL. Photo courtesy of 20th Century Studios. © 2026 20th Century Studios. All Rights Reserved.

Whalefall, at its core, isn't a very complicated film, and that very much works in its favor. We are here to solve daddy issues and not get digested for the next 101 minutes — sounds great. It's going to be one of those films where the premise alone is going to be the thing that hooks you, and if you're in, then you're in. That being said, this is going to prey on so many anxieties, and while it doesn't reach the level of "there is a chunk of lead sitting in my stomach" as a film like Uncut Gems, the visceral reaction in the theater speaks for itself. It should be experienced in a crowded room and on the biggest screen, not just because it's a whale, but a packed theater means you'll have more people to ruminate about the screams with after the fact.

Whalefall

Review by Kaitlyn Booth

8.5/10

Whalefall is a harrowing journey that puts the audience through the wringer in every single way that counts, but the horror is mostly balanced by the meditation on grief, fathers, and what surviving actually entails.

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