I walked out of Whalefall with a very familiar feeling. It was as though I’d just seen the same movie very recently. The more I thought about it, I realized that, while maybe they don’t look alike, the father-son conflict in Whalefall reminded me very much of the mother-daughter tug-of-war I just witnessed last week in the Blumhouse horror thriller Other Mommy.
So much so, I’d almost call them twin films. Almost.
One movie traps a man inside a 60-ton sperm whale. The other sends a demonic creature into the life of a seven-year-old girl by having it pretend to be her mother. On paper, Whalefall and Other Mommy sound like they were developed by two completely different teams who should probably never be allowed to share a writing room.
And yet, here we are.
Both 2026 releases turn family trauma into a literal nightmare, forcing their protagonists into terrifying situations that can only be escaped by confronting some deeply unpleasant truths about their parents. One has a man fighting his way out of a whale’s digestive system. The other has a little girl dealing with a supernatural entity that looks like her mom. Apparently, therapy was unavailable during preproduction.
Directed by Brian Duffield, Whalefall stars Austin Abrams as Jay Gardiner, a scuba diver who enters the ocean to recover the remains of his estranged father, Mitt, played by Josh Brolin. Things go spectacularly wrong when Jay is swallowed by a sperm whale, leaving him trapped inside the animal with a dwindling supply of oxygen and very few options for getting back to the surface.
That’s a pretty horrifying situation even before the family baggage comes into play. Jay’s relationship with his father was defined by abuse, impossible expectations and the sort of tough-love parenting that makes you wonder whether some dads should be issued a warning label. As Jay fights to survive, memories of Mitt force him to examine what his father taught him, what those lessons cost him and whether he can escape the man’s influence without throwing away everything he learned.
Other Mommy, directed by Rob Savage, puts a different spin on the same basic problem. Based on Josh Malerman’s novel Incidents Around the House, the supernatural horror film follows seven-year-old Bela, played by Arabella Olivia Clark, whose family is falling apart. Her mother, Ursula, played by Jessica Chastain, is increasingly distant, and the tension between her parents leaves Bela caught in the middle.
Then there’s Other Mommy, a terrifying shapeshifting presence that resembles Ursula and wants Bela to let it into her heart. The creature offers the attention and affection Bela desperately needs, but its intentions are far more sinister than a bedtime story gone wrong.
If you’re wondering how a little girl can possibly compete with a supernatural monster, the answer is that the monster isn’t the only problem. Bela’s family has its own secrets and emotional fractures, and the adults around her cannot simply pretend everything is fine and hope the demon gets bored.
That’s where the similarities between these movies get interesting. Neither protagonist can solve the central problem by punching the monster hard enough. Jay is fighting for his life inside a whale, but he’s also struggling with the legacy of a father whose influence continues to shape him after death. Bela is facing an actual supernatural threat, but the emotional damage surrounding her is just as important to the story.
Both films turn an almost impossibly claustrophobic predicament into a metaphor for being trapped by your family. Jay’s prison happens to be a whale’s insides, which is an especially unpleasant place to work through your feelings. Bela’s nightmare unfolds around her home and the people who are supposed to make her feel safe. Neither situation offers much room to breathe, literally or emotionally.
The movies approach those ideas from very different directions. Whalefall is a survival thriller built around a man battling a biological nightmare while revisiting his relationship with his father. Other Mommy uses supernatural horror to explore parental neglect, childhood vulnerability and the frightening gap between the family a child needs and the one she actually has.
But both stories eventually arrive at the same uncomfortable realization: surviving your parents’ damage means understanding it rather than letting it control the rest of your life.
That doesn’t mean Jay and Bela have identical experiences, of course. A father whose abuse leaves his son struggling with grief is not the same thing as a shapeshifting demon trying to possess a child. One of those problems is significantly harder to explain to your insurance company. Still, the monsters in both movies work as physical expressions of emotional pain that the protagonists cannot simply ignore.
It’s also a pretty bleak double feature for anyone who thought horror was supposed to be an escape from everyday problems. You can watch a guy get swallowed by a whale, or you can watch a child discover that the person who looks like her mother may be something far worse. Either way, the evening’s entertainment comes with a reminder that family dysfunction has a remarkable ability to follow you anywhere.
Even inside a whale.
Maybe especially inside a whale.
So, are Whalefall and Other Mommy literally the same movie? No. One is an aquatic survival thriller, and the other is a supernatural horror film. But underneath their wildly different premises, both are about people trying to survive the consequences of their parents’ failures.
If Hollywood keeps turning unresolved family trauma into increasingly elaborate physical nightmares, the next movie in this unofficial series will probably involve somebody getting trapped inside a haunted minivan. And honestly, after these two, I’d watch it.
