Men would really rather struggle in the belly of a whale than go to therapy

Whalefall, adapted from Daniel Kraus’s novel of the same name by Brian Duffield and Kraus himself, and directed by Duffield, is about a sperm whale minding its whale business in its whale home when a RUDE HUMAN commits home invasion and ends up wrestling a squid inside its stomach. Never mind that this is evolutionarily impossible and there is simply no way for a sperm whale to swallow a human being, none of this would happen if people simply stayed out of the ocean, where we do not belong and are not welcome.

The rude human in question is Jay (Austin Abrams), who is mourning the death of his father, Mitt (a particularly salty dogged Josh Brolin) one year after Mitt died by suicide rather than let terminal illness claim him. Their relationship being spiky, Jay and Mitt were not speaking when Mitt was ill, and Jay still has not read the letter Mitt left behind for him. Instead of dealing with his emotions in a mature manner, Jay decides to load up his scuba gear with one hour of oxygen in an attempt to retrieve his father’s body (frankly insane behavior if you’ve ever read even one diving “rescue gone wrong” story, which Jay apparently hasn’t despite growing up around the sea). All of these decisions exist solely to propel the story.

While diving, Jay sees a sperm whale locked in a mortal battle with its natural enemy, a giant squid. In a bout of spectacularly bad luck, the squid gets a tentacle on Jay, who is then dragged down the gullet of the sperm whale along with the squid—nature is indifferent to the suffering of man. Now, Jay is on a ticking clock. His oxygen is running out, and the sperm whale’s three stomachs come complete with acid, so he simply must escape the whale. The whale, meanwhile, did not ask for this foreign body to be in its stomach, and if Jay minded his own f-cking business, the whale’s life would not be threatened by Jay’s presence in its stomach.

Sperm whales are just out in the ocean deep, living their lives, mostly not seeking revenge for centuries of wholesale murder done under the banner of “whaling” (with one notable exception), and yet they are continually being the made the subject of man’s struggle with his own nature. And it is always men shouting “thar she blows” and “Towards thee I roll, thou all-destroying but unconquering whale”, and “let me out of your f-cking stomach”. Whales did not ask to be a human allegory for trauma; they would probably just like to eat the f-cking squid in peace.

While Jay is struggling to survive the whale, so, too, is the whale struggling to survive in the ocean. There are orcas, which will prey on sick or weak sperm whales, and a pod injures the whale, who was already having an upset tummy because of the stupid man stuck inside it, and now it has been mortally wounded, too. Jay is now really f-cked, because if the whale dies with him still inside, he will have no way to escape. His final attempt involves his remaining oxygen, a battery, and steel wool the whale previously ingested because humans cannot improve the ocean we can only ever make it worse, and he makes an explosive exit from the whale.

Does it look cool? Sure, Brian Duffield is a decent director and Whalefall is tense and propulsive, though it is about 20 minutes too long. But we simply must stop making sperm whales the vessel for our emotions, they did not ask for that sh-t. We put them through enough with whaling and Moby Dick, we should leave the sperm whales alone for a while. Alas, poor whale, suffering and dying because a man would rather attempt a highly risky rescue dive than read a f-cking letter.

Whalefall is now playing exclusively in theaters.