The Whale (2022)
Movie · 2022 · Drama · 1h 57m · R · English
Curator score: 5.2/10 (1.5M ratings)
Overview
A reclusive English teacher suffering from severe obesity attempts to reconnect with his estranged teenage daughter for one last chance at redemption.
Ratings
- Curator score: 5.2/10
- IMDb: 7.6/10
- Letterboxd: 3.66/5
- Rotten Tomatoes: 64%
- Metacritic: 60
- TMDB: 7.8/10
Director
Darren Aronofsky
Production
A24, Protozoa Pictures
Cast
Brendan Fraser, Sadie Sink, Ty Simpkins, Hong Chau, Samantha Morton, Sathya Sridharan, Jacey Sink, Allison Altman, Lance Oppenheim, Grace Perkins, Wilhelm Schalaudek
Curator Review
Verdict
A raw, performance-driven chamber drama that earns its emotional peaks through Brendan Fraser’s central turn and a tightly confined, grief-soaked setting. It’s powerful for viewers open to heightened melodrama and thorny family reckoning, but its symbolism and manipulation can feel heavy-handed or divisive.
Best for
- Viewers who like intense, actor-led dramas
- Fans of grief, shame, and redemption stories
- People open to theatrical, emotionally confrontational filmmaking
- Audiences interested in body image, addiction, and family estrangement
Skip if
- You dislike melodrama or overt symbolism
- You want naturalistic realism over heightened allegory
- You’re sensitive to body-focused imagery or emotional distress
- You prefer films with a lighter tone or broader narrative scope
Overview
The Whale is built like a pressure cooker: one room, one man, and a lifetime of regret closing in around him. Darren Aronofsky leans hard into confinement and emotional extremity, and the result is a film that feels both intimate and theatrical, with a visual language that keeps turning the apartment into a kind of moral trap. Brendan Fraser gives it real gravity, and the supporting cast helps the movie land its confrontations with bruising force.
Worth noting
At the same time, the film is very aware of its own symbolism, and that can make it feel blunt or overdetermined. Some viewers will read that as sincerity; others will find it manipulative or even unintentionally comic. The movie’s biggest strength is also its biggest risk: it wants to be felt immediately and intensely, sometimes at the expense of subtlety.
Bottom line
If you respond to confessional dramas about shame, faith, family damage, and the possibility of one last act of grace, this is a worthwhile watch. If you need emotional realism without the operatic framing, it may leave you cold. Either way, it’s a conversation piece anchored by a memorable central performance.
Top Letterboxd reviews
Karsten (3.5★) · 10352 likes
big exhale after this one
#1 gizmo fan (1.5★) · 8835 likes
Did Dan the pizza guy represent God judging us? Sorry I don’t get movies unless every single metaphor is explained to me
Logan Kenny (1★) · 8042 likes
I met my late partner almost three years ago. she’s been dead for about two now. when we first started dating, one of the biggest conversations we had was about our respective eating disorders. I had struggled with not eating for significant periods of time. mixed with a lot of exercise, it meant that I lost a fair bit of weight and was extremely thin for a long time. she had struggled with bulimia in the past and it affected… more I met my late partner almost three years ago. she’s been dead for about two now. when we first started dating, one of the biggest conversations we had was about our respective eating disorders. I had struggled with not eating for significant periods of time. mixed with a lot of exercise, it meant that I lost a fair bit of weight and was extremely thin for a long time. she had struggled with bulimia in the past and it affected… more
SilentDawn (0.5★) · 6345 likes
10 'Simple Jack' for Aronofsky heads, or maybe his Norbit. Darren's latest case in miserabilism is an a24-produced theatrical adaptation that functions as both a saccharine weepie for people who use the #brendanissance hashtag and those who wish that 'my 600 pound life' somehow had less artistic integrity. This is a classic example of a movie being so unbearably full of itself that it, intermittently, transforms into a pretty funny parody of the very film it's attempting to succeed as.… more
clem (1.5★) · 6247 likes
he was drinking diet pepsi he good
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Topics
drama, melodrama, chamber piece, psychological, grief, body image, family estrangement, religious guilt, confessional, intense