You Can’t Really Make a Feel-Good Body-Horror Movie
<em>The Whale </em>aims for noble sentimentality, but Darren Aronofsky can’t stop turning pain into spectacle.
From the first minute, is suffused with dread. The director Darren Aronofsky has long specialized in that type of atmosphere; even when working on the tiniest scale, he conjures mounting horror out of the mundane. His latest work closely echoes prior films such as and , both claustrophobic epics with thudding scores and dreary outlooks. But in , which is adapted from Samuel D. Hunter’s play, the sinister mood immediately feels at odds with the subject.
