{"id":646365,"date":"2026-10-14T17:48:10","date_gmt":"2026-10-14T17:48:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/646365\/"},"modified":"2026-10-14T17:48:10","modified_gmt":"2026-10-14T17:48:10","slug":"whalefall-review-the-most-surreal-blockbuster-in-years","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/646365\/","title":{"rendered":"Whalefall Review \u2013 ‘The most surreal blockbuster in years’"},"content":{"rendered":"

While searching for his father\u2019s remains in the Pacific, Jay (Austin Abrams) is scooped up into the mouth of a whale, with only an hour of oxygen left with which to plot his escape.<\/p>\n

Out of sight, in the inky abyss, nature\u2019s greatest battle has never been caught on camera. In an awesome, ominous, goosebump-plucking recreation, Whalefall<\/a> brings us face-to-face with a sperm whale hunting a giant squid in the chasm of Monterey Bay. For scuba diver Jay Gardiner (Austin Abrams), it\u2019s a case of wrong place, wrong time, wrong dinner. Lassoed by a lashing tentacle, he\u2019s dragged into the leviathan\u2019s maw.<\/p>\n

For sheer, intense spectacle, that set-piece alone will rip you a new blowhole, even if it is biologically dubious. They may have traffic-cone teeth and a jaw like a drawbridge, but a sperm whale\u2019s gullet isn\u2019t much wider than a dinner plate. Still, why let science get in the way of a good movie? Whalefall is unlike anything you\u2019ll see this year.<\/p>\n

\"Whalefall\"<\/p>\n

How Jay came to be lunch is mapped out from the get-go. After his estranged dad commits suicide by drowning, Jay dives down to rescue his remains in an act of closure \u2014 and gets enclosed in the most hellish place imaginable. What unfolds is a kind of biological escape room as Jay relies on his wits to keep him alive (shout out to the luminous jellyfish cast in the unlikely role of Cast Away<\/a>\u2019s Wilson).<\/p>\n

Lit in sickly phosphorescent green, the artillery drum of a colossal heart counting down like a booming clock, this is body-horror writ large: a Lovecraftian nightmare of ooze, pump and heaving flesh, lung-crushingly claustrophobic, deliberately disorientating and, for a Hollywood film, bracingly avant-garde.<\/p>\n

No other film looks, sounds or feels remotely like it.<\/p>\n

Taking a leaf from solo survival classic 127 Hours<\/a>, Whalefall breaks from the horror through Jay\u2019s flashbacks to his dad, an alpha-male seadog and savage idealist played by Josh Brolin with a face like a clenched fist. The whale, of course, comes to symbolise Jay\u2019s suffocating relationship with him.<\/p>\n

Brian Duffield\u2019s last film, the ingenious near-silent alien-invasion drama No One Will Save You, feels like a blueprint here. Scuba regulator clamped in his mouth, Abrams \u2014 who only recently attempted to escape an outbreak of Raccoon City\u2019s infected mutants in Resident Evil<\/a> \u2014 is mute for long stretches, enduring squid bites, stomach-acid burns and perforated eardrums, the fear and desperation played out in the eyes.<\/p>\n

If it\u2019s not already obvious, here\u2019s a movie committed to taking wild creative swings, culminating in Brolin\u2019s spirit barking guidance like a grumpy Jedi ghost. Hard to swallow? Maybe, but the risk pays off with a surprisingly poignant closing shot. Occasionally, the father-son flashbacks stall the momentum of survival, but Whalefall is a gutsy response to those claiming Hollywood is out of ideas: no other film looks, sounds or feels remotely like it. Take a deep breath and dive in.<\/p>\n

Frightening, thrilling, bold and brutal, this one-location survival horror is a genuine one-off and the most surreal blockbuster in years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"While searching for his father\u2019s remains in the Pacific, Jay (Austin Abrams) is scooped up into the mouth…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":646366,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[146,85,46,397],"class_list":["post-646365","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-entertainment","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-movies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/646365","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=646365"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/646365\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/646366"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=646365"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=646365"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=646365"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}