By Emily Kwan
Staff Writer

“Whalefall,” directed by Brian Duffield, uses the gross insides of a whale digesting a man as a metaphor for birth and the relationship between father and son.

Based on the novel with the same name, Jay Gardiner, played by Austin Abrams, dives down Monterey Bay to search for his estranged father’s remains, but instead gets swallowed by a giant sperm whale. 

The movie starts with a clear theme: a dead dad, a son feeling immense guilt for hating him before his death and getting out of the stomach of a whale.

It appears as a time-sensitive survival film, then turns into something of the supernatural and confusing.

A concise ending never came to be and added more questions than answers.

The image of Jay struggling within the stomach gives almost a sense of being inside a womb, with the fetus fighting its way out. 

His father, Mitt Gardiner, played by Josh Brolin, came in either form: a flashback teaching Jay, or a voice Jay communicates with in the whale. 

Jay slowly devolves into a state of delusion as the movie progresses, eventually turning to talking to the whale, who in turn provides advice as Mitt.

Besides the unsightly insides of a sperm whale, the flashback scenes were attractive to look at, the extreme close-up shots were extremely well done and the tense feeling they were trying to portray was kept intact.

The movie scored high ratings on IMDb: 6.8/10, and a 70% on Rotten Tomatoes.