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Belly of the Whale

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Whalefall

by Hope Madden

Austin Abrams is having quite a year. First, he battled mutants all over Raccoon City (Resident Evil), and now the poor guy gets swallowed whole by a sperm whale! Dude cannot catch a break!

Whalefall director Brian Duffield, who adapts Daniel Kraus’s book, traps you in there with him and for an hour and 46 minutes, you both struggle with Josh Brolin’s memory, an undigested octopus, time, and digestive fluids as Jay (Abrams) fights to survive.

Brolin is Mitt Gardiner: scuba enthusiast, tourist whale watching boat captain, and Jay’s combative father. Remember how fun it was to watch the two of them fight in Weapons? Well, this is not like that. The sparring Jay and his dad do, and the regret and resentment left behind, echoes loudly through Jay’s entire ordeal.

Were there no underlying metaphor, no larger concept fueling Jay’s fight for survival—no reason to cut away from that pulsating pool of goo now and again—Whalefall would have been little more than a pretty gross survival tale. It is as much a story of surviving grief as surviving the whale. Those daddy issues are a little heavy handed and sappy, sure, but still, you’ve never seen anything like Whalefall.

Editing, creature design, set design, and sound design coalesce to heighten tensions and convince you that you’re surrounded by innards. Crushing, moving, opening, closing, unpredictable innards. Duffield plays with the most primal of fears, and somehow, he and his team have crafted an environment that convinces.

Terrifying, claustrophobic, squishy, and primal, the anxiety Duffield creates is extraordinary. Is it realistic? How the hell do I know? But the filmmaker is committed and confident, and he’s found the perfect hero.

There is just something deeply likeable about Abrams. Whether he’s the laid-back smack head in Weapons or the arrested post-adolescent in Resident Evil, Abrams’s performances are earnest. There’s truth to them, as well as humor. For Whalefall, less humor and more earnestness.  In many ways, that’s why the film succeeds. It is unabashedly sincere, and Abrams carries that off perfectly.

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Resident Evil

by Hope Madden

A lot of people seem curious to know what Zach Cregger is doing following up Weapons—one of the most revered horror films of the last decade—with the seventh installment in a horror video game movie franchise. By the looks of Resident Evil, having a blast is what he’s doing.

Rather than offer another badass on a mission story, Cregger’s episode, co-written with Shay Hatten (John Wick 3 & 4, Army of the Dead), enters the newly overrun Raccoon City with a hapless courier (Austin Abrams) tapped to run an important medical package to the Raccoon City General Hospital. Things go from bad to worse to much worse to oh my god no pretty quickly in an impressive series of set pieces showcasing body horror, carnage, mutants, goo, and more.

Cregger’s direction is fresh and fun, building dread and releasing it with bits of humor. He gives us some nifty first person shooter POV, but not enough of it to become tedious. The camera lingers when you don’t expect it to, and turns away when you really hope it will.

Cregger never takes the film too seriously, which is usually the downfall of any video game adaptation. But he absolutely embraces the video game-ness of the film, digging into the grossest and most disturbing elements of the game while rooting the mayhem in a character you can care about.

Resident Evil is frequently funny without falling into camp. Abrams, who was such a standout comic force in Weapons, delivers an ideal doofus to root for. John Walter Hauser has a fun expository sharing cameo, and Zach Cherry is also pretty funny.

It’s also pretty gross, fast paced, tremendously violent, and harrowing in a fun way.

The unhinged horror of it all won’t surprise those of us who saw Cregger’s 2022 feature Barbarian. He’s a horror guy. He knows horror and he has fun with it while still leaving some scars. Resident Evil isn’t going to win anybody an Oscar, but it’s a good time.