Whalefall turns a diver’s fight for air into a reckoning with his father
Austin Abrams and Josh Brolin anchor Brian Duffield’s survival thriller, with compact whale sets and chronological filming tying Jay’s physical ordeal to unfinished family business.
The short answer: Austin Abrams and Josh Brolin anchor Brian Duffield’s survival thriller, with compact whale sets and chronological filming tying Jay’s physical ordeal to unfinished family business.
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Jay Gardiner has roughly an hour of air left, and the father he struggled with may hold the key to his survival. In 20th Century Studios’ Whalefall, Austin Abrams plays a college student swallowed by a sperm whale while searching for his late father’s remains. Getting out means drawing on lessons from the man whose death left him feeling both grief and relief.
Josh Brolin plays Mitt, a respected Monterey diver and a harsh, controlling parent. A year after his death, Jay returns to California and dives off Monastery Beach seeking closure. The whale’s pursuit of a giant squid turns that search into a fight to stay alive, with memories of Mitt becoming practical tools rather than simply painful history.
Getting out of Jay’s head
The novel began with a different whale encounter: a viral video of two kayakers who nearly ended up inside a humpback whale’s mouth. Author Daniel Kraus spent weeks researching sperm whales and speaking with scientists before writing his book, published in 2023. The film’s predicament grew from that research, but adapting it meant finding a way to show more than the mechanics of survival.
Director Brian Duffield, whose earlier films include No One Will Save You, co-wrote the screenplay with Kraus. Their central challenge was finding a screen language for a novel that spends so much time inside Jay’s thoughts.
A lot of the book is very internal, in terms of Jay figuring things out and recalling different bits from his life. Brian Duffield
Duffield wanted to make that interior experience external while preserving the feeling of reading the novel. Kraus, meanwhile, described the book’s optimism as a surprise after the cynicism of much of his earlier writing. In a discussion with The Film Stage, he also framed the whale as the story’s setting, not its villain—a useful distinction for a thriller whose human conflict begins long before Jay enters the water.
The production stayed close to the novel’s California settings where possible. The crew filmed around Catalina Island, Monterey and San Pedro, as well as on soundstages in Studio City. Monastery Beach provided the location for Jay’s first dive.
Inside the whale, the psychological challenge became a physical one. The constructed stomach sets stayed compact, leaving Abrams genuinely limited room to move. The stomach sequences were filmed in order, allowing him to carry Jay’s changing emotional state from one stage of the ordeal to the next. Rolling Stone Australia reported that he spent 40 days filming inside the practical whale set.
You shoot in order, so you’re able to feel the oscillation of where you need to go. Austin Abrams
For Duffield, confinement alone was not enough to shape the tension. He sought quieter stretches between crises so the next setback would hit harder. Making Jay audible posed another challenge: Duffield told TheWrap that an early test screening exposed how the set’s mechanical noise obscured Abrams’ dialogue. Sound design became one of the last elements the filmmakers finalized.
Building the underwater ordeal
Abrams’ preparation took him beyond the soundstage. He traveled to a sperm whale sanctuary off Dominica and scuba-dived with whale documentarian Patrick Dykstra. Back home, he practiced wearing full scuba gear around his neighborhood. The Irish Times also reported that he earned advanced scuba certification, building skills for a role that demanded comfort underwater.
The filmmakers worked with whale anatomist Dr. Joy Reidenberg, who had also advised Kraus during his research. Their questions covered the sperm whale’s multipart digestive tract, the effects of stomach acid on Jay and whether his equipment would hold up. Wētā Workshop joined early to develop materials for the whale’s interior, turning those anatomical questions into practical production decisions.
For Brolin, the family story reached beyond the role. He told The Irish Times that reading the novel prompted conversations with his own father and son about their relationships. The adaptation connects that unresolved family history to the immediate struggle for air: Jay has to draw on what Mitt taught him while trying to understand the parent he can no longer confront.