The new thriller with a credibility-stretching premise came out this weekend. Whalefall sees our main character getting swallowed by a sperm whale.

According to IMDB, “Follows a scuba diver who, while looking for his father’s remains, is swallowed by an 80-foot, 60-ton sperm whale and has just one hour to get out before his oxygen runs out.”

Austin Abrams starred as Jay Gardiner, the kid who winds up inside the whale. Josh Brolin played his father, Mitt Gardiner. I think that Austin Abrams does a great job, and he is having a big year after starring in the new Resident Evil film. I think he is a star in the making.

Now, the whale in the room is this… you absolutely need to suspend your disbelief in order to accept this premise. The idea that someone could be swallowed by a whale and attempt to survive is just ridiculous and implausible. If you can get past that, the scenes where Abrams is swallowed by the whale (thanks a lot squid) and trying to survive inside the whale are compelling, stressful and engaging as hell. I was fully tense the entire time Jay was inside the whale.

The film used flashbacks to give more details to the relationship between Jay and Mitt. Most of these flashbacks were okay, even if the ones that they showed were kind of heavy-handed. All of the flashbacks played a role in the situation Jay was in. The flashbacks were nowhere near as captivating as the scenes inside the whale. Josh Brolin was fine, if not good, as Mitt, but the character itself was fairly stereotypical.

The first two acts of Whalefall were tremendous and created such a suspenseful tone that it was feeling as if it was going to be one of the best movies of the year. Sadly, the third act was nowhere near as strong and, while still not keeping me from enjoying the film overall, it did bring my opinion of the film down. No spoilers of course, but I just did not think the ending reached the high levels of the first two acts.

The effects inside the whale were absolutely spectacular. They created such a feeling of claustrophobia and tension that the scenes were hard to watch at times. I was always waiting for the next thing to drop to cause trouble for Jay. The sound mix was perhaps Oscar level as the sounds inside the whale and the lead up to Jay being inside was just amazing.

One area that was a problem was the fact that Jay had to keep a mouthpiece in his mouth the whole time he was in the whale because of the toxic air in the whale’s stomach, and that led to Austin Abrams having to mumble a lot of the lines he had. It was difficult to understand what he was saying through much of the movie. So much so that perhaps they should have given an ADR for Abrams so he could be heard. It may have been used to give some realism to a series of scenes that had little to no realism about them. Maybe they could have placed words on the screen so the audience could know what Jay was saying.

I enjoyed this movie for most of the runtime, though it did slip from my initial thoughts of it challenging for the top 10 of the year to a point where it is a movie that I would recommend and liked, but not loved.

3.8 stars