‘Whalefall’ review: Austin Abrams enters the belly of the beast

A rude sailor named Mitt (Josh Brolin) delivers a drunken sermon to his son Jay (Austin Abrams), whom he treats like a skinny disappointment. Mitt says the Inuit used every part of the whale as food, tools and cultural sanctity. Add family therapy to this list.

Brian Duffield’s intriguingly profound “Whale Fall,” adapted from the recent Pulitzer-winning 2023 novel by Daniel Kraus, begins with the death by suicide of the abusive Mitt. In pain and grief, Jay goes scuba diving to recover his father’s body and is swallowed by a sperm whale. Prison time gives Jay time to think. But he doesn’t have much time; There is only one hour of air in the oxygen tank.

Is the sound Jay hears gurgling from the belly of the beast his father’s voice? Or does it just have bends?

Adapted by Duffield and Kraus, “Whalefall” is a heart-pounding story mixed with a survival story, or possibly a biologically accurate adaptation of “Pinocchio.” Emotions are real; Joseph Trapanese’s soulful orchestral score goes overboard. (Knuckle-tattooed Mitt looks like he’d prefer a voluptuous shanty by the sea.) But this taut adventure makes a powerful case that even when a child struggles to live up to his own family, bad parents can still teach good lessons.

In scenes at Jay’s childhood home, his mother (Elisabeth Shue) and older sisters (Jane Levy and Emily Rudd) have a lightness that hints at how harshly Mitt treats his only son, made all the heavier by having given birth not to a mini-me but to a mini-meh. Loner Jay has grown up to avoid his father’s interests – or anyone’s help – and an independence that, if he survives, he may find that he is not so different from his father.

But first he needs to get rid of this courage. Swallowed like a mealworm, Jay searches through flashbacks from his father’s lectures on whale anatomy. Meanwhile, the film tries to squeeze out a tear, occasionally squeezing too much, but earning a few wistfully familiar sighs.

Set on the California coast near Monterey Bay, “Whalefall” was shot by Aaron Morton to make it look realistic. This Pacific Ocean is the real ocean: muddy, cold, gray and hostile. As Jay walks towards the water, the waves seem to want to push the reedy young man back to shore. When he manages to throw himself over the waves to rest atop an underwater cliff, the darkness below is frightening, as if we’ve returned to primitive prey.

The whale attack is a random tragedy, filmed chaotically as if it were happening to the camera. It would have been nice to see more, but at least we feel the visceral terror of the sonar, the thrust of its muscular tongue, and the speed with which it launches Jay from its mouth to its throat, then jams it into its stomach.

There’s couch-shaking violence in the way the whale breaks the surface and drops its weight back (sly sound design is by James Miller), and body horror in its claustrophobic, spongy interior chambers. Which wet hole is the outlet and which leads to a pool of digestive acid that dissolves in the skin? Of course, in space no one can hear you scream. But underwater we grit our teeth at Jay’s every shuddering breath.

I read “Whale Fall” when it was first published and I couldn’t even imagine how the book could be turned into a movie. Everything seemed against it, from the ponderous narrative to the dark interiors of the creature to the isolated gloom of the lead. At least “127 Hours” had some great shots of Utah.

Some difficulties can be corrected. The whale’s throat is flickeringly illuminated by a bioluminescent jellyfish that Jay befriends. To the film’s credit, it acts as if every animal has as much right to exist as this human being outside its ecosystem. An aggressive squid was so angry at being eaten that I regretted eating live sashimi in Koreatown.

Other pitfalls need to be forgiven, too, like Abrams having to explain how he feels with an air hose between his teeth. The script wisely tones down some of the book’s sweetness, sparingly having Jay refer to a makeshift gadget by his pet name, “Beaky.” Still had to say Something We want to shout out that you are wasting your precious oxygen every now and then. A few seemingly important lines of dialogue come out garbled from the mouthpiece. I say apparently because honestly I couldn’t tell you what they were, but the tenor seemed important.

Abrams is a good actor for the role, and not just because last month’s “Resident Evil” proved he can handle the screen on his own. Although he started acting as a young actor with roles in “The Walking Dead” and “Euphoria” and continued to play characters younger than himself, he never had that overly flamboyant child actor appeal. Instead, he comes off as scruffy and vulnerable — even like the timid junkie in “Guns,” where he appears to be imitating a cartoon cat. Watch her opposite Ben Stiller in Mike White’s 2017 unreleased angst drama “Brad’s Status,” and if you haven’t, you can get a feel for what I’m doing: a precocious talent biding his time until his roles grow. This fall looks like her graduation party.

Given the compressed running time, there are memories in the film of Mitt seeming practical and wise rather than a bastard. To make this point, it relies on a terrible boating scene that begins with Mitt smashing a beer can on his forehead until it bleeds. In Brolin’s cartoon style, “There’s more to existence than fun!” Sometimes the blunt-headed whale looks like Brolin.

I’m writing this on the birthday of my father, a kind man who passed away when I was roughly Jay’s age. He wasn’t a Mitt and I don’t believe in ghosts. But still, I too am aware of my father’s voice. Sometimes our rational understanding of life and death encounters a seemingly impossible existence. That’s the big idea simmering beneath “Whalefall’s” surface.