Whalefall Is the Most Disgusting Tearjerker You'll See This Year

Jay (Austin Abrams) is attacked by a squid inside the belly of a whale in Whalefall. —20th Century Studios Warning: This post contains spoilers for Whalefall , now in theaters.

It's been a big few months for Austin Abrams moaning and groaning his way through some of the worst situations imaginable.

First, as medical courier Bryan Hodukavich in Resident Evil , he was forced to contend with an onslaught of mutant zombie monsters.

Now, as Jay Gardiner in Whalefall , he spends the majority of the film's 106-minute runtime getting repeatedly maimed inside the belly of an 80-foot-long sperm whale that weighs 60 tons.

Directed by Brian Duffield ( No One Will Save You , Spontaneous ) and co-written with Daniel Kraus (the author of the best-selling 2023 novel on which the movie is based), Whalefall follows Jay as he plunges into the treacherous depths off Northern California's Monastery Beach to retrieve the unrecovered remains of his late father Mitt ( Josh Brolin ), a legendary local diver who became severely ill from advanced, terminal Mesothelioma.

The movie's opening scene shows Mitt leaving sealed letters for his wife and three children in a cooler on his boat before taking his own life by strapping diving weights to himself and jumping into the ocean.

A year later, Jay still hasn't opened his letter when he is swallowed by a massive whale who's on the hunt for a giant squid in those same waters.

Jay contemplates his situation inside the whale in Whalefall —20th Century Studios With just about an hour of oxygen left in his diving tank, Jay must endure a series of increasingly agonizing ordeals as he searches for a way to escape his terrifying predicament.

There's a nasty encounter with the giant squid's razor-sharp beak, exposure to corrosive stomach acid, and the ever-present threat of being crushed by the whale's constricting organs or suffocating on the toxic, unbreathable methane gas inside its body.

Amid the visceral horror of Jay's ingestion, we learn more about his complicated relationship with Mitt, a harsh and often emotionally abusive man, through a series of flashbacks.

Eventually, the whale breaches the surface and Jay nearly manages to break free by climbing out of its open mouth.

But he ends up tumbling back inside the whale as it dives deep down into the ocean, causing Jay's eardrums to explode and him to start to hallucinate from lack of oxygen and panic.

It's then that Jay, believing he is likely going to die, begins hearing his late father's voice speaking to him through the whale.