"Whalefall," a survival thriller adapted from Daniel Kraus's 2023 novel, opened in theaters this weekend with notably strong reviews for a mid-budget genre film, landing a 79% critics' score and a 64 rating on Metacritic according to aggregated counts reported by trade outlets. The film follows Jay (Austin Abrams), a scuba diver who descends into the Pacific to recover his late father's remains and instead finds himself swallowed whole by a sperm whale, racing an internal clock of roughly an hour before he runs out of air.
Josh Brolin plays Jay's father, Mitt, appearing throughout in flashbacks that explore the two men's strained relationship as the present-tense survival ordeal unfolds. Rotem Rusak's review for Nerdist was among the most enthusiastic, calling the film disorienting in the best way.
"Whalefall is a movie that you cannot truly be prepared to witness, but we very much enjoyed it... It's a roller coaster that made me laugh, scream, shake my fist, and sit in total rapturous awe."
Rotem Rusak, Nerdist
Not every critic was won over. James Berardinelli's review for ReelViews argued the premise works better on the page than on screen, writing that the film's reliance on flashbacks undercuts its own tension: "Once the movie lost me... it never won me back." The Bulwark's review landed in between, describing the film as almost goofily earnest while warning that its body-horror stretches are not for the squeamish.
The film opened in a crowded weekend alongside the video-game adaptation "Street Fighter" and the Jane Austen adaptation "Sense and Sensibility," giving audiences an unusually wide spread of genres to choose from heading into the back half of October. Early tracking had pegged the film's domestic opening in the $10 million-to-$15 million range, modest next to its two wide-release counterparts but respectable for an original, mid-budget thriller without franchise ties.
With reviews skewing positive and word of mouth likely to hinge on how audiences react to its stranger, more surreal passages, distributors will be watching whether the film can hold its footing into a second weekend against the next wave of studio releases.
