2026 has been a good year for horror, thanks to movies like Obsession and Backrooms dominating the box office. And with spooky season upon us, there are a few upcoming horror movies to look forward to. Chief among them is Brian Duffield’sWhalefall, and its new trailer (seen above) has me feeling claustrophobic AF. And it’s also reminding me of another recent horror classic.
Whalefall is a book to screen adaptation of the novel of the same name, and focuses on a scuba diver Jay (Austin Abrams), who is swallowed by a sperm whale and has only an hour to try and escape. This new trailer really shows the terrifying nature of being trapped inside the mammal’s body, and I can’t help but think about that horrifying digestion scene from Jordan Peele’s Nope.
While the marketing for Nope (which is streaming with a Netflix subscription) made it looks like a movie about UFOs, it turned out that the flying saucer was a living creature nicknamed Jean Jacket. Midway through the movie it attacks Jupiter’s Claim, inhaling the crowd who are briefly shown traveling through its digestion system. It’s a scene thats haunted me for years, and Whalefall‘s new trailer is seriously triggering me. You can re-watch that sequence below:
Watching Jay try to find a way to escape the stomach of a sperm whale in the trailer for Whalefall is scary, and it feels like a full-length version of Nope’s most disturbing scene. Add in that Austin Abrams’ character only has 60 minutes of oxygen left to get out, and the stakes couldn’t be higher. This new footage shows him dealing with the terrors of the squid that pulled him into the whale, as well as the acid of its digestive tract. The trailer is anxiety-inducing, and I can only imagine how gripping it’ll be on the big screen this fall.
Being swallowed alive by a whale (or in Nope’s case, a flying creature) is truly the thing of nightmares. The sense of claustrophobia and helplessness is palpable in Whalefall’s early footage, which is likely why the hype for the survival thriller has been steadily building. We’ll just have to wait and see how Brian Duffield’s movie ultimately performs at the box office, but it’s chilling footage combined with a release coinciding with Halloween has me feeling optimistic about its life in theaters.
Obviously these are two very different movies with entirety unique sets of circumstances. But as a horror fan I couldn’t help but find a connection between Whalefall and Nope. Let’s just hope the upcoming movie’s protagonist does better than the ill-fated folks at Jupiter’s Claim.
Whalefall will hit theaters on October 16th as part of the 2026 movie release list. As for Nope, that’s streaming now on Netflix.