The deep blue sea has always been frightening enough on its own, but Hollywood filmmaking has done its part to make it all the more terrifying. The number of movies that have explored the horrors lurking in the depths could probably fill the Mariana Trench: our fascination with the sea predates the medium, but film took the obsession at play since Herman Melville’s time and made hay. The subgenre has everything, from ridiculous sci-fi fantasy (the genius sharks of Deep Blue Sea; the cosmic entity of Underwater) to simpler, more plausible, and equally terrifying horrors (open water, or the body-crushing pressure of the ocean floor).
Ocean horror has delivered plenty of hits in its century-spanning history, but it’s also been around for so long that fresh ideas seem to have slipped off the hook. How many times can we watch a riff on Jaws without thinking, “Not this again”? How many more scrappy survival horrors can Hollywood produce before the genre cannibalizes itself? It’s long been synonymous with salacious, sometimes-trashy horror, but Whalefall — an unbelievably claustrophobic new thriller — is poised to bring its potential back to the surface.
