The crew behind Whalefall built enormous practical whale-interior sets to make a trapped diver’s struggle feel cramped, sticky, and tangible. But those sets can only do so much. In her Polygon review, Samantha Nelson argues that the film’s strong performances and elaborate environments can’t overcome contrived flashbacks or make its physical and emotional stakes feel real.
That’s the central problem in its comparison with The Martian. Daniel Kraus’ 2023 novel Whalefall follows a scuba diver swallowed by a sperm whale, while Andy Weir’s 2011 book strands an astronaut on Mars. Both put a man in a seemingly impossible predicament and ask him to survive using his knowledge and skills. Nelson calls Ridley Scott and Drew Goddard’s adaptation of The Martian a masterpiece, finding optimism, humor, and thrills in an astronaut methodically growing potatoes. Brian Duffield’s Whalefall, which he co-wrote with Kraus, follows a similar survival-story formula without, in her assessment, earning the same investment.
The difference isn’t simply whether the hero can improvise an escape. It’s whether viewers have a reason to believe in the person improvising, and whether each solution feels like more than a conveniently timed screenplay instruction.
Austin Abrams plays Jay Gardiner, whose early-morning solo dive goes wrong after he disregards the diving-safety lessons his father, Mitt, played by Josh Brolin, drilled into him. Jay also ignores repeated warnings from Mitt’s friend Hewey, played by John Ortiz, and the Coast Guard. Nobody even knows he’s missing when he grapples with a giant squid that a whale then eats.
Nelson compares Jay with another Abrams protagonist appearing in theaters this month: Resident Evil’s hapless organ courier, Bryan Hodukavich. Both make terrible decisions that leave them facing tentacle monsters, but Bryan at least doesn’t know how dangerous his trip to Raccoon City will be. Jay knows better. Nelson judges Resident Evil the better film in every respect, arguing that Abrams’ manic energy fits a goofy video game adaptation better than an ostensibly harrowing drama about loss.
A survival mission built on unresolved grief
Jay’s recklessness has a specific source. Whalefall opens with Mitt, terminally ill with mesothelioma, jumping from his tour boat while laden with weights. He chooses to die in the ocean he loves rather than in a hospital bed. Nelson finds this the film’s most emotionally effective scene, with Brolin’s rasping breath grounding his preparations for a final dive.
Hewey’s response adds another painful detail. As he assists Mitt’s suicide, he pointedly focuses on fishing from the opposite side of the boat, avoiding what’s happening until the splash finally makes him break down.
A year later, Jay still hasn’t read the note Mitt left him. He also can’t bring himself to visit the cemetery plot where his family buried an empty casket. Mitt explicitly wanted his body to nourish the ocean, just as a whale carcass does in the process that gives Whalefall its name. Jay nevertheless believes recovering his father’s remains will put things right. His dive isn’t just dangerous; it pursues a sense of closure that conflicts with his father’s wishes.
Once Jay is trapped, the film repeatedly supplies a memory tailored to the emergency at hand. Panic makes him gasp and burn through his oxygen, prompting a flashback to Mitt teaching him how to make a tank last. When Jay gathers other objects the whale has swallowed to MacGyver an escape, Mitt’s remembered lesson concerns the ocean’s ability to provide. Nelson finds these matches increasingly absurd: each crisis seems to summon exactly the piece of paternal instruction the plot needs.
The flashbacks also tell the story of the father-son relationship, but Nelson argues that their practical usefulness doesn’t make that relationship fully developed. Brolin’s experience playing deeply flawed fathers helps him convey stern disapproval with little effort. Mitt pushed Jay so hard to absorb his seafaring knowledge that he drove his son away. Yet the film spends more time teaching viewers about whale anatomy and behavior than examining the family those lessons affected.
Mitt never seems to have dived with his wife or either of his two daughters. For Nelson, that raises questions the film leaves untouched: the sexism of giving his son this special attention, and the resentment Jay’s sisters might have felt about it. Instead, the women remember Mitt fondly without acknowledging how abusive he could be. Their rosy view makes the family conflict less convincing rather than resolving it.
Whalefall is very much not based on a true story
Kraus’ novel is often marketed as The Martian meets 127 Hours, and Nelson sees a clear debt to Danny Boyle’s 2010 drama in the adaptation. Like James Franco’s trapped canyoneer, Jay draws motivation from flashbacks and hallucinations. There’s a crucial difference, though: 127 Hours is based on a harrowing true story. Whalefall asks viewers to accept a much more fanciful ordeal while treating it with comparable gravity.
The VFX team’s enormous practical sets make Jay’s claustrophobic, goopy surroundings feel tangible, but Nelson still struggles to take his predicament seriously. In one sequence, he tries to climb out of the whale’s gullet using a bioluminescent jellyfish as a lamp. He also apologizes to the brainless creature, itself a would-be whale snack, for mistreating it. The issue isn’t that a survival film must avoid absurdity. It’s that this particular absurdity clashes with the emotional tone Whalefall is trying to sustain.
Some quieter images work for Nelson: the whale gliding through dark water, and Jay swimming among brightly colored fish in a California kelp forest. Those moments offer glimpses of the underwater world Mitt revered. But a film meticulous about explaining how not to die while scuba diving barely explains why its characters want to dive at all. Nelson argues that even one scene of father and son enjoying a dive together could have established both their bond and Mitt’s attachment to the sea, making him easier to understand sympathetically.
The whale also serves as a fairly explicit metaphor for Mitt. Jay once had to escape home to avoid being crushed by his father’s expectations; now grief and guilt threaten to drown him. Nelson suggests this material might have worked better as an abstract fairy tale, a coming-of-age story about a son recognizing the value of his father’s wisdom after his death.
Instead, her verdict is that the attempt to give a silly premise serious weight, along with clumsy, repetitive revelations through flashbacks, drains the story of the emotion it might have carried. She predicts a box-office disappointment rather than a repeat of The Martian’s success. That’s a forecast, not a reported result: Whalefall releases in theaters on Oct. 16. The test is whether viewers find a convincing reason to care about Jay’s escape beyond the ingenuity of the whale surrounding him.
