Interview: Austin Abrams, Josh Brolin and Brian Duffield Dive into ‘Whalefall’

Being swallowed alive by a sperm whale sounds like a particularly unpleasant way to spend an afternoon, but for Austin Abrams, it’s also the starting point for one of the year’s most unusual survival thrillers. With Whalefall heading to UK cinemas, Love Horror caught up with stars Abrams and Josh Brolin, alongside writer-director Brian Duffield, to discuss the extraordinary challenges of bringing this ambitious underwater nightmare to life.

Based on Daniel Kraus’ acclaimed 2023 novel, Whalefall follows Jay Gardiner (Abrams), a young diver searching for the remains of his deceased father off the California coast. When an encounter with a sperm whale goes catastrophically wrong, Jay finds himself trapped inside the enormous creature, with just an hour of oxygen remaining and seemingly impossible odds of escape.

It’s an outrageous premise, but one that combines the claustrophobic terror of being trapped inside a living animal with a surprisingly intimate story about grief, family and unresolved relationships.

Brolin plays Jay’s late father, Mitt, whose complicated relationship with his son becomes central to the story. As Jay struggles to survive, memories of his father and the lessons he passed down take on an entirely new significance.

For Duffield, who co-wrote the screenplay with Kraus, adapting such an unusual novel presented a fascinating creative challenge. How do you turn a story that unfolds largely inside a whale into a compelling cinematic experience while retaining its emotional depth?

As the trio explain in our exclusive video interview, the answer involved some extraordinarily demanding filmmaking, particularly for Abrams, who spent much of the production working in confined spaces and underwater environments.

The physical demands of portraying Jay’s ordeal were considerable, with Abrams required to convey panic, exhaustion and determination while navigating the film’s elaborate practical environments.

Brolin was particularly impressed by his co-star’s commitment to a role that required considerably more than simply pretending to be frightened.

“I don’t know a lot of people that could survive what he survived for as long as he did,” he admitted.

And according to Duffield, much of the discomfort audiences will witness was very real.

“But it’s when he looks like he’s being compressed and really tight spaces, he’s being compressed and really tight spaces.”

Beyond the technical challenges, our conversation explores the film’s treatment of fathers and sons, the emotional distance between Jay and Mitt, and how a seemingly impossible survival scenario becomes an opportunity to examine the things families leave unsaid.

There’s also the small matter of what might be lurking inside the whale itself, adding another disturbing dimension to Jay’s increasingly desperate predicament.

Combining creature-feature spectacle, underwater claustrophobia and an unexpectedly personal story, Whalefall promises something rather different from the usual survival thriller.

Watch our full interview with Austin Abrams, Josh Brolin and Brian Duffield below, as they discuss the film’s extraordinary production, the emotional heart of the story and what it really takes to bring a nightmare of this scale to the big screen.

Whalefall opens exclusively in UK cinemas on 16 October 2026.

Whalefall interview with Austin Abrams, Josh Brolin and Brian Duffield

Whalefall trailer