If you’ve seen the marketing or know the premise of Whalefall, you likely won’t be surprised to learn that this film isn’t for people who fear water, small spaces, and/or being eaten. You may, however, be surprised that this film has more going for it than the survival strategy of escaping a sperm whale’s innards. Like Jaws, this film recognizes that a dangerous creature lurking underwater isn’t enough to be thrilling, no matter how gruesome the special effects. You have to care about who is trying to escape those jaws, and director Brian Duffield adds a little more human spirit than harm to this unexpectedly emotional film about being devoured by a whale. It doesn’t make it a great film, but it still towers over its small pond of brainless creature features.

The story is less about the whale and more about Jay Gardiner (Austin Abrams) struggling to process his dad’s death. He returns home after his dad (Josh Brolin) killed himself by jumping off a boat and letting the ocean take him. Flashbacks reveal a complicated relationship with a father who was harsh when talking about diving, enthusiastic when talking about the ocean, and bitter when talking about his illness that took him away from an underwater world. Compelled by his father’s influence, a reluctant Jay decides to search the ocean floor alone for his father’s remains to find some sense of closure.

What he finds is a massive sperm whale rising from the depths, feasting on him as a side dish to his main course of a giant squid. These scenes are truly terrifying, especially for how they arrive. Until the moment everyone is waiting for, the film is a somber, reflective drama, with brief splashes of beauty as it explores a mesmerizing underwater environment. The cruelty of nature hits like a truck as the gargantuan predator swallows Jay whole, posed in a way that is more horrifying than absurd. Stuck in the digesting and munching interior, there are plenty of dangers that Jay will endure to find his way out of this gross mess. There’s the limited oxygen in his tank, the acidic juices of the whale’s stomach, and the threat of a still-alive squid inside the whale, threatening to turn Jay into the center of an aquatic turducken.

During this dangerous break from being lunch, Jay’s mind reveals more of his troubled history with his father, and he longs for a connection they never quite had. These are some compelling moments of highlighting the trauma left behind by parents at various stages. We see Mitt stress the importance of survival in scuba diving, but also his dark sadness at being torn away from his passion. We also see how Jay was in the right for wanting to reject his father’s cruel view of the world, but still regrets he could never have a healthy relationship. Those thoughts keep him going through a situation where he ends up battered, bruised, and broken.

As rousing as the film starts, it loses its dramatic momentum in the third act, where a spiritual angle puts the rest of the movie on autopilot. It’s certainly ambitious for the film to have Jay speak to his father through hallucinations of oxygen running out and his connection to nature. While I don’t feel this turns the movie into a corny dose of grief closure, it does place the film on a simpler track. With Jay having a more direct line to his feelings, the escape route becomes even simpler, and Jay finds the best tactic more easily. This creates a misguided effort to steer toward a more somber catharsis and ecological attunement, making it feel as if Jay turned on a hint system. It’s still cool to see Jay take that path, but you can’t help but think how much more engaging the film would be if it stuck to the hard mode of internal instincts and emotions.

Whalefall dares to swim in waters a little deeper, even if it doesn’t turn up much in its plunge towards a more humanistic story than creature-feature comforts. Not all of it works, and it only seems to grace the father-son relationship with deeper questioning rather than explore it further. But for how many mindless aquatic horror films flood the big and small screen with little brain, this film shows impressive ambition, as there are some brains and hearts stuffed into those whale guts.