Oddly enough, history is replete with stories about being in the belly of a whale. There’s the biblical version with Jonah (see: The Bible, duh) and its reinterpretation in Pinocchio, finding the puppet-boy stranded in the cavernous innards of Monstro. But never before has a cinematic telling truly explored how exactly it would feel to be eaten alive and swallowed down into a whale’s stomach. Until now. Enter Whalefall, the wild new survival thriller from director Brian Duffield, which finds Austin Abrams’ diver Jay in deep, deep trouble.
Stuck in a whale’s stomach with only an hour to escape, Jay’s predicament had to feel real – so Duffield opted for practical effects wherever possible, “to give you that visceral feeling of, ‘This is really happening to him’,” he tells Empire. As an audience member, you should feel it, and hear it too. “The whale’s heart is beside the stomach, so throughout the movie it is beating and the stomach is reacting to the beats,” says Duffield.
As if that wasn’t enough, Jay will face more than acid and a dwindling air-supply in the literal belly of the beast. “For a while, there was a squid puppet in the stomach, too,” says Duffield – describing the stomach set as “a diva”, for all the issues it posed. “We would fill it up with water and then drain the water out, and the stomach would assume a completely different shape overnight. All our storyboarding, previs and planning — none of it worked once we got inside the whale,” he says. “That was really hard and challenging, and could lead to really dark days.” Even a fake whale’s stomach can be a dangerous place.
Read Empire’s full Whalefall feature in the Digger issue, on sale Thursday August 17. Pre-order a copy online here. Whalefall comes to cinemas on October 16.
