With “Whalefall,” director Brian Duffield thinks he might have the most beautiful stomach on screen in movie history. Though that might depend upon the beholder.
Based on Daniel Kraus’ novel, the survival thriller (in theaters Oct. 16) centers on young scuba diver Jay (Austin Abrams) fighting for his life with only an hour left in his air tank after being accidentally swallowed by a gigantic sperm whale. To get out, Jay has to navigate the hazards of the whale’s insides, including a multi-chambered stomach and the huge creature’s long trachea.
Or, as Duffield succinctly calls it, “the yuckiest escape room ever.”
In “Whalefall,” Jay returns home
after his father's suicide and is seeking out his remains underwater when he gets in the path of a whale trying to eat a giant squid and winds up in its belly. In designing the spaces in the digestive tract where Jay travels, filmmakers worked with whale experts for scientific accuracy while also crafting moments that made it look like a beautifully rendered Hayao Miyazaki animated movie, Duffield says. “It was always so important to us that, as disgusting as it is, the whale’s biology is doing what it was made to do. Just the fact that it's doing it is just such a strange miracle of life.”
Jay winds up in the first chamber of the stomach with the giant squid – that's where the whale crushes its food. Then our embattled hero ventures to a second chamber where there's gastric acid he needs to avoid. Fun fact: A sperm whale has four stomach chambers, including two that “Jay will never be small enough to enter,” Duffield says. “In the second stomach, you see him trying to break into the third stomach, but it's the size of a golf ball. That's where it liquefies the squids and then pushes it out the next chamber.”
Jay is faced with the challenge of the trachea as well, which is both his best way to escape the whale's mouth but also treacherous because of the height he needs to climb. Duffield likens this overall quest to “The Lord of the Rings” where Frodo's journey is “about 15 feet” and where every land “has its own vibe and energy and sound.”
Using water tanks and practical effects, the whale’s insides were designed to be sort of a haunted house that “confused and baffled” Jay as well as the audience, Duffield says. “There's not really a guy who's like, ‘Don't go into that room. That room does this.’ You just are in that room and you're like, ‘I hope Pennywise doesn't do something terrible to me in this room.’ ” Jay does find clues and tools to help him get from place to place – for example, he uses jellyfish and other bioluminescent organisms as a light source – but also obstacles.
“Every time the science would explain something to us, we're like, ‘Oh, that sucks for him.’ It gets worse and worse,” Duffield says.
When making "Whalefall," Abrams viewed that first stomach where Jay lands as a costar rather than a film set. “It was this thing that you were spending so much time inside of,” the actor says. “It is alive in a sense because it is being moved by humans outside of it. It does have a reaction to you and what you do in there.”
In one scene, Jay loses his cool a little bit – as anyone probably would in his stressful position – and tries to hurt the creature from the inside. “The whale’s like, ‘That's enough of that,’ and dives,” Duffield says, creating a “very dangerous,” “Top Gun”-style crashing exercise where G-forces pin Jay against the stomach walls and surround him with rushing water.
And yet there are gentle scenes as well, like when Jay tries to calm the walls down and listens to the whale’s heartbeat, which sparks bioluminescence.
Jay’s predicament is certainly harrowing, but Duffield makes it clear that he’s not inside of a monster – “You're inside of a god, and there is this appropriate fascination and awe with the creature that you can have,” the director says. Jay “makes mistakes that lead him into that place, and the whale is just eating lunch.”
Because it “felt necessary,” Abrams swam with real sperm whales before filming started, which was “incredibly special,” he reports. “They can fully just ignore you or they can be interested and come up to you. Thankfully, I had some pretty crazy interactions with them, and it was really moving.”
Adds Duffield: “It's really impossible to have that experience and think they're anything other than the best of us.”
If you or someone you know is struggling with suicidal thoughts, call or text the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline or visit 988lifeline.org for free, confidential support 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: 'Whalefall' takes audiences inside 'the yuckiest escape room ever'
