It’s safe to say that this fall, Austin Abrams will be put through the ringer.
The Weapons star is pulling double duty in September and October with Resident Evil and Whalefall, the latter of which just debuted its thrilling and terrifying first trailer. Directed by Brian Duffield (No One Will Save You), Whalefall is based on the novel by Pulitzer Prize winner Daniel Kraus and follows Jay Gardiner (Abrams) who, after the death of his father Mitt (played by Josh Brolin in the film), looks to recover his remains and ends up in a harrowing predicament.
Whalefall, which also stars Elisabeth Shue, Jane Levy, Emily Rudd, and John Ortiz, will see Jay reckon with the death of his father while trapped in the belly of a whale. With oxygen running out, he only has minutes to escape.
ScreenRant spoke with Duffield on the eve of the trailer’s release and the director broke down what he calls his most challenging film yet thanks to a combination of practical effects, potentially deadly stunts, and a surprisingly emotional story that resonated deeply with him.
“Every shot in the trailer and in that whole sequence has Austin Abrams in it,” says Duffield of the extended sequence we see in the first look at Whalefall. “I think it was very important to be both myself and to Austin that you really feel like this movie is an experience that you’re going on with this kid.”
And while that experience is deeply terrifying, it also goes to unexpectedly emotional places. “It is very open about its emotional aspect and everyone’s always very surprised by it,” says Duffield of the added drama being Jay’s predicament. “If I have 20 [or] 30 minutes left of my life, what are the things that I emotionally want to reconcile with?”
Check out our full chat with Duffield below.
Brian Duffield Details Whalefall Filming, Animatronic Whale Sets & Austin Abrams Stunts
SR: You filmed at least partially in the Monterey Peninsula and then a lot in LA as well. From a technical perspective, how much are we looking at Austin in the water and inside any physical whale sets? Can you touch on the level of effects at play here?
Duffield: When he’s getting into the ocean, you can see Monastery Bay up in Monterey and then his progress from the water to the cliff’s edge is around Catalina and in Monterey. And then I think every shot in the trailer is our tank that we built in Radford and Studio City and every shot in the trailer and in that whole sequence has Austin Abrams in it. Sometimes there’s stitching with a stunt performer or a CG takeover when it’s a stunt that would just kill Austin with probably, but every shot in the trailer has Austin in it. I think it was very important to be both myself and to Austin that you really feel like this movie is an experience that you’re going on with this kid. It’s not like Gravity. I love Gravity, but those are professional astronauts in a professional situation that have training on how to deal with this.
And Austin is a freshman in college who is not equipped to deal with any of this. And something that I love about movies is when there’s one movie going on and another movie really rudely interrupts it. And so it’s not like Austin’s really thinking about whales or talking about whales in the movie and then this whale just barges in and ruins his life.
And so it was really important that it really feel like Austin was in that situation, that everything he does is really smart. He’s not making any mistakes, but it doesn’t matter because he is five foot something and the whale is 85 feet and does not know that he’s there. And so it was really important to us that it be as much of Austin as possible. And so it’s really him and our animatronic whale mouth struggling against current, trying to not get pulled. There’s some wirework in there. The throat is a very tight space that he’s in, we didn’t enhance that space-wise. So it’s really him in a real scuba tank breathing air, screaming, doing all that stuff for real.
And I think the trailer, obviously being brief, you don’t really get a sense of that. But I think in the full scene, which is about three times as long, you really feel that Austin’s going through that. And I think the rest of the movie too, you really feel that it’s this guy going through this really harrowing, terrifying ordeal. And something we’ve always said from the get-go is we wanted [it] to feel like there’s two people stuck in the whales, the audience and Austin, and really try to build the filmmaking around that experience, that we’re not going to do crazy camera shit just for the fun of it. It’s really like I want people to feel like they’ve spent a hundred minutes on this very exhausting, terrifying journey with him. And now when it happens to them, they know how to get out.
Brian Duffield On Finding Whalefall & Tapping Into The Emotions Of This Terrifying Survival Story
ScreenRant: As a director, it feels like with each new film, you’ve swerved a little bit. You started with Spontaneous, you go to No One Will Save You, [and] now you’re at a survival thriller with Whalefall. Is that intentional or is that something that just happens as you come across projects [or] projects come across you?
Brian Duffield: It’s funny, I feel like I knew I was going to direct Spontaneous a page into that book by Aaron Barmer. And then this one, I found out about it because Daniel [Kraus] tweeted about it and I just felt this love at first sight kind of thing. And I’d never spoken to Daniel before. I think we just followed each other because we’re nerdy dudes. And I just literally slid into his DMs and was like, “I need to read this as soon as possible.” And then he wasn’t even finished writing it yet. And then when he finished it, he sent it to me and I didn’t know any of the father-son element. I think the tweet was just like, a 19-year-old is stuck in a whale and has an hour left to live. And then when I read all of that stuff, I think my son was one at the time, [and] I remember reading on my iPad with him in my arms and it really messing me up. And I read it in one sitting and the next day I was just like, I’ll do anything to get to be a part of this. And I was definitely not looking for a whale movie, but I think it just found me.
And so yeah, I guess I was always looking for a challenge and I’m not anymore because this was very challenging [laughs]. But yeah, I think it just came from, as an audience member, wanting to be fed good food in theaters or on streaming. And with Spontaneous and this, they both being movies where I’m like, I’ve never seen this before and I would love to watch this so much and the thought of someone else doing it would drive me insane. And so in terms of those adaptations, I think they just both found me at the right time in my life.
SR: Austin Abrams is [also] having this huge moment right now. He was just in Weapons, now you’ve got Whalefall coming out less than a month after Resident Evil. It’s got to feel good to have him as part of the film.
Duffield: Yeah, he auditioned for the movie, and it was way before Weapons had come out. So he had some heat off of Wolfs, but I think we all heard that Weapons was really cool, but it was before a trailer or anything had come out. And so, I think it’s a testament to Austin just on the strength of his auditioning [for] this. He was my guy from the get-go, but the studio too, without the heat of Weapons or Resident Evil or any of these things, we’re just like, he’s pretty unbelievable. And so it’s great that we’re benefiting from the Austin Autumn, but we cast him purely because of how fucking good he is. And so all this other stuff is nice whipped cream on top for us, I guess.
SR: The book Whalefall is also a deeply emotional story. You’ve got this underlying story about a father and son relationship, as you mentioned. So would you say that it sticks pretty closely to the novel in that regard, or can we expect departures? You don’t hire Josh Brolin without giving him a couple meaty scenes, right?
Duffield: I wrote the script with now Pulitzer Prize winner, Daniel Kraus, which is so cool because he won that a week or two ago for Angel Down. And Daniel’s really been my creative partner on this whole project. And so I would say if you’ve read the book, you’re not in for many surprises because the book is, I think, page for page, one of the best books I’ve ever read. And so it really became, with Daniel and I, just how to sculpt that shape into a feature. And then so much in the book is Jay’s thought process. And so how do you articulate that physically? But I think this is as openly emotional of a movie as you can make [and] I think we get away with being so openly emotional because the situation is so terrifying.
And one of the first things that I talked to Austin about is everyone has masks or a pretense in the real world. Even with your family, there’s performative elements. And I was like, once you’re in the whale stomach, for all you know, no one will ever see you again. It can just be as raw, terror-wise, as possible. But then as he’s dealing with some of these really emotional issues with Josh’s character, you can be really raw. I never have to tell Austin you can look uncool because no one cares about it less than Austin, but you can just be very vulnerable and open emotionally. And I think you’ll see in that journey he goes on in the opening 15 minutes, he’s very reserved and quiet and closed off. And then once everything happens to him, it’s a very different Austin, as you can imagine, because there’s no one you’re performing for anymore.
You’re just [thinking], how do I not get digested? And then also, concurrently, it’s just like if I have 20 minutes, 30 minutes left of my life, what are the things that I emotionally want to reconcile with? And so it is very open about its emotional aspect and everyone’s always very surprised by it. We just did the orchestra last week and the conductor had to take a break because she was crying. And they don’t show you the movie concurrently. They just show you it all chopped up. And so it was a lot of people being very surprised all of a sudden in this very jigsaw version of the movie. People were very taken aback by how emotional and vulnerable [how] Austin gets, but also Josh. I think he looks very scary for some of the trailer, but I think it’s some of the most vulnerable and beautiful work that Josh has ever done.
And I think he does it in a very surprising way because he’s essentially dead for the entirety of the movie, but I think the work he does is really special. And I remember Austin watching a scene of Josh’s he wasn’t in and crying because he was just like, “This is so beautiful, the work that Josh is doing.” And I’m really excited for people to see it.
Whalefall hits theaters on October 16.
- Director
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Brian Duffield
- Writers
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Brian Duffield, Daniel Krauss
- Producers
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Brian Grazer, Ron Howard, Will Rowbotham, Allan Mandelbaum