Curious how Whalefall works? The writer digs into the real science of the survival thriller
Think Whalefall’s central ordeal is far‑fetched — it’s alarmingly close to reality, which is exactly why it burrows into your most primal fears.
If you think being buried alive is unsettling, Whalefall escalates things to absolutely nightmarish territory. Picture getting swallowed whole by a sperm whale and then having to figure your way out before you’re digested. It genuinely doesn’t get much more nerve-shredding than that, and no, it’s not just a daft take on the Jonah myth. The writers actually put in far more research — and a lot less wishful thinking — into how all this would play out for a real person, as opposed to a bloke with divine connections.
Science, Not Fairytales
So here’s the setup: the story follows Jay Gardiner (played by Austin Abrams), a diver on a mission to find his father’s remains, who winds up accidentally gulped down by a sperm whale. He’s now got about an hour’s oxygen and the unenviable challenge of not being digested alive. Writers Brian Duffield and Daniel Kraus told MovieWeb they went deep into the bio-science, binning the more poetic ideas people get from the Bible. Kraus apparently obsessed over whale anatomy, and the more he discovered, the grimmer things got for poor Jay. Here’s what Kraus said when asked about how the real stomach works:
“A lot of people, when they hear the premise, they assume you’re going to be swallowed and you’re going to be eaten up by acid, and you’re dead in five minutes. Not so. The first stomach is the chewing stomach, though. So sperm whales chew with their stomach. It’s only the second stomach that has the acid. That’s why it takes Jay a few minutes to get to that second stomach before he realizes his skin is beginning to burn, and you can’t fit into the other stomachs unless you’re liquefied.”
If you’d always assumed being eaten by a whale would be a quick acid bath, you’re well off the mark — there’s a rather grisly journey first, courtesy of the world’s least welcoming gullet.
Painstaking Details and Practical Mayhem
Kraus made it clear: their research only made things more miserable for the character, never easier. Duffield backed it up, saying they tried to follow the biology as far as possible in every aspect of the production. That meant literally building a full-sized, moving whale rig, complete with squishy, anatomically-correct insides. Abrams described filming it as being like laundry on the spin cycle, repeatedly flung about in a dark, slimy mess. One practical hiccup: in real life, Jay would be stuck in pitch black, but filmmakers need viewers to see what’s going on. So, Duffield admitted, they took a few lighting liberties:
“There’s probably some lighting choices that are a little advanced. I think our first stomach is weirdly fair. That is fairly possible lighting-wise. In our second stomach, we pushed the lighting probably a little bit further than would be possible, but I wasn’t interested in directing a podcast. I wanted it to be a visual movie.”
Fair point — nobody’s paying for ninety minutes of radio.
Comparative anatomist Joy Reidenberg got involved too, helping the team avoid complete nonsense. She did point out, for the record, it would take a seriously massive, full-grown bull sperm whale — not the sort you’d spot on a nature cruise — to even pull off this accidental swallowing. And real whales go after their grub miles deeper than even the most foolhardy diver could make it.
Whalefall’s team constructed a moving, anatomically correct whale interior to put their hero through the wringer — it wasn’t CGI, and yes, it really tossed the actor about.
In short, Whalefall isn’t out to comfort anyone who’s ever fretted a little about what lurks beneath. If anything, it goes all in on the grisly reality — and frankly, that’s a refreshing change from the usual ocean monster nonsense.