Planning to take a quick jaunt into a cave , a phone booth , a coffin , an escape room , or a spaceship —or to saunter onto a ski lift before a snowstorm or between a literal rock and a hard place ? Watch out! If you’re an attractive actor, there is a good chance you’ll get stuck there for the duration of an unbearably tense feature film.
But while beautiful bold-faced names have been trapped in all manner of unlikely locales—a luxury apartment ! Stanford University ! Hugh Grant’s house !—there’s never been a movie about a hot guy who gets swallowed by a whale. Until now.
Whalefall stars Austin Abrams as Jay, a hapless college student and reluctant scuba diver who embarks on a cursed voyage into the briny deep. While searching for the remains of his dead father (Josh Brolin, giving Quint from Jaws if Quint went to the gym a lot), Jay inadvertently finds himself swept into the gargantuan maw of a sperm whale.
He’s got a broken rib and less than an hour’s worth of oxygen in his tank. What happens next?
If you want to experience Whalefall for yourself—and honestly, you should; it’s one of the best times I’ve had at a movie theater this fall—you should ideally read no further. If, however, you’re unbearably curious about how this high-concept survival movie plays out, avast, me hearties: Let me answer some questions you may have.
Okay, so: How exactly does one get swallowed by a whale?
In this case, it happens by accident. The whale is trying to eat a giant squid—no, not one played by Laura Linney —and Jay just happens to be in the wrong place (near the squid) at the wrong time (breakfast).