Jay Gardiner (Austin Abrams) is a teen on a mission.

Estranged from his father, Mitt (Josh Brolin), Jay has moved out of the family house and has spent the year couch-surfing with friends. Embittered and exasperated by his father, nothing Jay did seemed to measure up to the standards expected of him.

In the meantime, Mitt, a popular figure in the local diving community of California’s Central Coast, has been diagnosed with advanced mesothelioma, a rare and aggressive form of cancer. Pressed by his mother and sisters, Jay has angrily rebuffed any entreaties to make amends with his father.

In the end, Mitt commits suicide in the Pacific Ocean on the coast of Monastery Beach.

Wracked by guilt, Jay decides to scuba dive down to the site to retrieve his father’s remains. It’s a long shot, as he is nowhere near the experienced diver his father was, but Jay is determined to make up for what he perceives as his failure to live up to his father’s expectations for him.

The dive starts well enough but soon goes disastrously wrong. Jay encounters a giant squid, which is being pursued by a sperm whale looking to feed off his natural prey. Incredibly, Jay gets entangled in the squid’s tentacles and is drawn into the whale’s mouth, where he is pulled into the first of its four stomachs.

A terrified Jay realizes he has only an hour of oxygen left in his tank before he suffocates in the belly of the beast, one hour to figure out a way to escape while coming to terms with his father’s memory.

The clock is ticking.

A WHALE OF A TALE

Whalefall, in theatres now, is not the only story we know of that deals with a person swallowed by a whale.

In the Old Testament’s Book of Jonah, we read of a most reluctant prophet. When God commands Jonah to travel to the Assyrian city of Nineveh to warn them that they would be destroyed for their wickedness if they did not repent—Jonah flat out refused!

Instead of obeying God’s command, Jonah ran the other way, boarding a ship headed to a faraway land.

If Jonah thought he could escape God, though, he was mistaken.

A huge storm arose that threatened to sink the ship that Jonah had taken flight on. The crew, realizing that this was no ordinary tempest, cast lots and discovered that Jonah was to blame. Jonah admitted this and told the sailors that if they threw him overboard, the storm would abate. The kindhearted sailors refused and continued rowing, but when their efforts failed, they reluctantly threw Jonah into the sea, and the storm calmed.

Jonah’s misadventures were not over. After being thrown overboard, he was swallowed by “a huge fish” (Jonah 1:17), popularly considered to be a whale, where he stayed for three days and three nights. While in the belly of the beast, Jonah repented and prayed to God to deliver him.

“And the Lord commanded the fish, and it vomited Jonah onto dry land” (Jonah 2:10).

RACE AGAINST TIME

Trapped and alone, Jay wracks his brain for something—anything—that could get him out of the mess he is in. Much to his surprise, memories of his father surface.

“I know your dad was rough on you,” says Mitt’s best friend to Jay days before the dive, “but he knew what he was talking about, especially down there.”

Now, Jay remembers flashbacks of times he had with his father, memories he had consigned to the dust heap of his mind.

“I wanted to pass on things that matter, so when it matters, you’ll know what to do,” Jay recalls Mitt saying, as in a half-remembered dream.

As Jay starts to recall some of the wisdom his father had passed along to him, he sees him in a new, better light, and he uses what he has learned to good effect as he slowly assembles a plan to escape the whale.

But will his newfound knowledge and, yes, love and respect for his father come too late for him to make use of it?

Will Jay’s newfound knowledge and, yes,love and respect for his father come too latefor him to make use of it? KEN RAMSTEAD

SOUL SEARCHERS

A reluctant prophet and a reluctant son, there are parallels to the stories of Jonah and Jay.

Both men wanted nothing to do with their lot, Jay even so far as denying he even knew his father in an encounter with a shopkeeper whose life had been saved by Mitt. Jonah took matters to the extreme by refusing the task he had been given and running away.

It took a watery incarceration for both man and teen to recognize the errors of their ways. Jonah prayed to God.

“He said: ‘In my distress, I called to the Lord, and He answered me. From deep in the realm of the dead I called for help, and You listened to my cry’ ” (Jonah 2:2).

For Jay, that hour trapped in the whale undid years of resentment and misunderstanding, as well as led to a reckoning that, while late in coming, was needed.

We don’t need to be swallowed up by a whale to have God hear our prayers, but we do need to come to terms with our own shortcomings before we can present them to Him. It takes honesty and transparency, but that is really what God expects of us.

This honesty is not just about avoiding punishment, as Jonah realized and Jay is finding out; it’s about aligning our hearts with God’s truth and building genuine relationships.

Photos: 2026 20th Century Studios

FUN SPERM WHALE FACTS

Did You Know?

• Brainiacs

Adult sperm whales have the largest brains of any modern or extinct animal on Earth, weighing up to 7.8 kilograms (17 pounds), more than three times the size of the average adult human brain.

• Lung Power

Sperm whales can stay under water for up to 90 minutes at a time, their lungs adapted to withstand extreme pressure changes.

• Turn Up the Volume

Sperm whales are the loudest animals in the world. Underwater, sperm whales can produce clicks, known as “codas,” that can reach to more than 200 decibels. This far surpasses the volume required to burst a human’s eardrum, and their clicks are louder than a jet engine at takeoff!

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