Film portrays diver swallowed by sperm whale

In the film Englouti, currently in theaters, Austin Abrams plays Jay, a diver who travels far from California in search of his father's remains, portrayed by Josh Brolin. While exploring the ocean floor, he is swallowed by a massive sperm whale. Trapped inside the animal, he has only one hour of oxygen to find an escape.

Set design based on whale anatomy

The film's director, Brian Duffield, built sets that reproduced different parts of the sperm whale's anatomy to allow Austin Abrams to physically move in this narrow environment. The team relied on anatomical research and scientific advice to make these scenes as credible as possible on screen.

Scientific consultation on whale swallowing

On the occasion of the film's release, the scientific magazine Science News consulted Joy Reidenberg, a comparative anatomist at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, who also advised the film's team. According to Reidenberg, a very large adult male sperm whale, at least 18 meters long, could physically swallow a human being. However, this does not mean that such an event is likely.

Real-world incidents and whale feeding habits

Shane Gero, a marine biologist from Project CETI, notes that researchers are not sure that sperm whales systematically swallow their prey whole. "When they surface with squid," he explains, "pieces of them can literally stick out of their mouths or float behind them." Humans have certainly been accidentally caught in the mouths of whales while they are feeding, before being released.

Survival challenges in a whale's digestive system

Shane Gero estimates that a person would have great difficulty surviving as soon as they entered the mouth of the sperm whale. The movement of water, impacts, and the animal's reactions could cause serious injuries or drowning. The biologist also mentions the risk that the human body, equipped with a diving tank, could constitute a dangerous obstacle for an animal that mainly feeds on squid.

Anatomy of the sperm whale's stomach

These dangers are clearly shown in the film when Jay is crushed in the stomach and burned by digestive juices. Joy Reidenberg explains that the sperm whale's stomach consists of four compartments. The first has thick muscular walls that participate in the mechanical processing of food, since the sperm whale's teeth, which are only present on the lower jaw, are pointed and do not allow it to chew like humans do.

Film combines survival and emotional journey

While the anatomy of a very large sperm whale makes the accidental ingestion of a person physically possible, the chances of surviving the entry into its mouth and remaining alive in its digestive system for an hour appear extremely low. Englouti is adapted from the novel Whalefall by Daniel Kraus, published in 2023. The film transforms this exceptional situation into a gripping survival story. The director and his team relied on scientific research and advice from cetacean specialists to try to make this experience as credible as possible on screen, especially through the physical reconstruction of the inside of the sperm whale. However, Englouti is not just a fight for survival. In trying to find his father's remains, Jay must also confront the conflicting feelings that his father left him with, between pain, guilt, and difficulty in mourning. The film thus tells an intimate journey in which the struggle to stay alive is accompanied by a confrontation with a painful past. Englouti is now playing in cinemas.