FILM REVIEW: WHALEFALL (15) ESP RATING: 4/5
If you’re thinking this is a one-trick whale – it couldn’t be further from the truth.
It might seem like a stretch for the entire runtime of a movie being based on a scuba diver being swallowed alive by a sperm whale – but there is way more to it than that.
Underneath the surface, there’s a moving survival thriller with a big heart.
College student Jay (Austin Abrams from the recent Resident Evil reboot) returns home to the Monterey Bay area of California, a year after the death of his scuba-diving father Mitt (Josh Brolin) – who he had a very contentious relationship with.
Jay refused to speak to his father during his terminal illness (or read the letter he left behind for him), who – rather than dying in a hospital bed – chose to commit suicide by tying weights to himself and jumping into the Pacific Ocean, leaving his mother (Elisabeth Shue) and older sisters resentful that they weren’t left with a body to mourn.
But after being trained by Mitt to scuba dive since childhood, Jay sets out on a treacherous task of trying to locate his father’s body near the edge of a submarine canyon.
Which gets inexplicably way more perilous when a sperm whale inadvertently swallows Jay, when a giant squid the mammal was eating wraps its tentacles around his legs – dragging him inside the whale too.
He then awakens inside one of the creature’s stomach chambers, and against all odds must try and devise a plan of escape.
Which involves tackling the giant squid still alive inside, deadly skin-dissolving digestive acids and poisonous jellyfish, to add to his already horrendous situation – with his tank of oxygen diminishing by the minute as he tries to make his way through the whale without being crushed.
And it’s in these moments that the movie truly comes into his own, as via flashbacks between father and son, Jay uses everything that Mitt taught him to try and forge an escape – thus signifying a stronger bond with his sometimes stoically heavy-handed father than he realised.
Which leads to Whalefall not being just a simple movie about survival, but a moving drama about love and loss, which really adds unexpected depth to proceedings as Jay’s situation becomes more harrowingly desperate.
It has a couple of intermittently cheesy moments – Jay envisioning his father becoming one with the whale is a little bit much – but for the most part this is absorbing stuff.
And something a little different to get your teeth into if you’re bored of more commercial blockbuster fare.
ESP Rating: 4/5
Gavin Miller
Showcase Cinema De Lux Peterborough & Odeon Luxe Peterborough, Out Now
Cast: Austin Abrams, Josh Brolin, Elisabeth Shue, John Ortiz, Jane Levy & Emily Rudd
Running Time: 1 Hr 46 Mins
Director: Brian Duffield
Film Review Venue: Showcase Cinema De Lux Peterborough
For all the latest film information & showtimes at Peterborough’s Showcase Cinema De Lux & Odeon Luxe Cinemas go to www.showcasecinemas.co.uk and www.odeon.co.uk
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