I saw ‘Whalefall’ … with a man who really got trapped in a whale

Michael Packard wants you to know he wasn’t swallowed by a whale — he was inside one. Yes, he knows what the crush of a whale’s jaw feels like as it clenches down, and how dark it is inside there once it does. He knows what a whale’s tongue feels like, how it writhes. He knows what it’s like to bang on the walls of a whale’s mouth and how futile that can seem as you stare down death, as if a fly were tapping on your flesh, begging for reprieve. But… “I wasn’t swallowed!” he explains to a Times Square movie theater audience that includes the actors Josh Brolin and Austin Abrams. “I was trapped in its mouth .”

“Seriously?!” Brolin asks with his jaw agape, seemingly stunned.

Surreal semantics aside, Packard, 62, is perhaps the only person in recorded history who can weigh in with any real authority on the new film “Whalefall,” in which Abrams plays a scuba diver trying to do what Packard did in 2021: escape from inside a whale . The premise of the movie, which opens nationwide on Friday, has been dubbed wild , insane and even dumb . Yet, here is Packard in the flesh — a living Jonah.

“Whalefall” isn’t based on Packard’s story, but in an unavoidable way it sort of is. There have been a couple of incidents in which kayakers believe they have momentarily been scooped up by a whale’s mouth, including a seconds-long 2020 encounter that Pulitzer Prize-winning author Daniel Kraus said mostly inspired the 2023 book that has been adapted for “Whalefall.” (Kraus also co-wrote the new movie’s screenplay with director Brian Duffield.) But Packard’s is the only documented case in which someone diving underwater became engulfed and then trapped inside one of the largest and oldest animals on Earth for any real extended period.

Marco Postigo Storel/CNN

“Whalefall” and Packard’s experience share a lot of the same DNA. They’re both stories of survival, of lives on the ocean, of fathers and sons, of the primitive fear we all hold deep down of being consumed by something bigger than us, as impossible as that might seem. They’re reminders of the ways in which our lives and deaths might have greater meaning than we’re aware. But after watching the movie, and watching the face of person after person try to process Packard’s story as he told them, it became apparent that what joined the two at the most fundamental level was the impactful power that storytelling can have on us as human beings.

“I don’t know what the word is, dude. I don’t make people happy, but I make them … amazed,” Packard says. “ Amazed . It brings out a lot of emotion.”

Packard was on his second dive of the morning on June 11, 2021, having already hauled in a bag full of live lobsters from the waters off Provincetown, his hometown. Lobster-diving was a natural career choice for someone who’d been obsessed with the ocean since he was 12 when his single mother saved up enough to buy him his first small boat. Under the water, it’s peaceful. Packard can turn his brain off. The depression that plagues him in winters is nowhere to be found. All he needs to do is hunt. “It just brings me to that place — that primal place,” he says. Yet being down there, comes with a price. You get to hunt, but you’re prey, too. Great white sharks stalk the seas of Cape Cod , but even if he spots them occasionally, Packard needs to put the threat out of mind, or else he’d never be able to do his job.

Merrily Cassidy/Cape Cod Times/USA Today Network/Imagn Images

From the water that morning, he handed the bag to his crewmate Josiah Mayo, who was onboard Packard’s boat, the Ja’n J, named for his two teen sons, Jacob and Josiah. (The numerous biblical J-names were nothing if not portentous.) Then, as he descended to the floor for another run, he was suddenly hit by what felt like a freight train. Water rushed around him and everything went dark. The shark finally got me , he thought, before realizing he couldn’t feel any sense of being bitten. Instead, he realized, he was being crushed.

As his arms flailed about, he could feel the hard, cavernous insides of what felt like a creature’s mouth. Its jaw was squeezing down on his trunk, with his legs sticking out of its mouth. Despite the incredulity of the situation, Packard knew there was only one creature in the area large enough to gulp him up: a humpback whale.

Weighing up to 40 tons and measuring as long as 60 feet, humpbacks are baleen whales that feed by using their massive jaws as fishing nets to scoop tiny prey — typically krill and plankton, and definitely not people — that they consume not with teeth but via keratin plates that allow them to filter-feed . Because this animal was thrashing wildly, Packard could sense he’d been picked up in error. The whale was just as confused as he was.

The force of the encounter initially knocked out Packard’s regulator mouthpiece, which supplies air from the oxygen tank, so he reached behind to locate it and shove it back in. Able to breathe again, he then tried banging on the walls of the whale’s mouth to push his way out, but quickly gave up when he realized it was immovable.

Amid his hopelessness, he could feel its enormous tongue pulsating over his whole body. “It’s contracting on my body, squeezing and letting go,” Packard recalls. “How did it feel? It felt like I was inside of a live creature that was trying to eat me.”

Packard knew the humpback couldn’t really swallow him because of the keratin plates, so there was no risk he’d move from mouth to stomach and be digested. But a terrifying thought soon entered his brain: “‘Oh my God, am I going to be in here for the next 45 minutes until my air runs out?’ That scared me even more. Forty-five minutes while this guy just swims around until I just suffocate.”

Convinced he was going to die, Packard thought of his sons and how his death would devastate them, robbing them of the father he wanted to be to make up for the one he’d never had. He thought of his mother and how broken she would be. He thought — whoosh .

Suddenly, Packard was free. After between 30 to 45 seconds with Packard in his mouth, the whale had risen to the surface and spat him out, sending him flying through the air in a massive spray that was witnessed by his crewmate and another nearby mariner.

As Mayo hauled him aboard, Packard broke down in tears and shock, screaming from a pain in his knee and a deeper one in his soul: “I was like, ‘Josiah, I was in the mouth of a f—ing whale! Oh my God! And I survived! I’m alive !

Now, over five years later, Packard is standing beneath an enormous ad for “Whalefall” in the middle of tourist-filled Times Square. We’ve been invited to a preview screening with some cast members cohosted by Reddit and Disney, which gave the world the last big movie about a character inside a whale: 1940’s “Pinocchio.”

Again and again, Packard tells the CliffsNotes version of his story to those he meets at a reception before the screening. Again and again, I witness their awe. People waiting in line to pose inside a model sperm whale do a double take when we explain who Packard is.

Worried the film might prove triggering (especially given we are seeing it in a Regal 4DX theater, where the seats will move and water will spray us as if we were on a ride), I assure Packard he can leave at any point. He confesses that when he watched the trailer he had “shiver bumps,” but with a couple of beers in his system as liquid courage, he assures me he’ll be fine.

“Whalefall” is not an enjoyable film — in the sense that it masterfully portrays truly claustrophobic and primitive horrors. It follows Jay (Abrams), a young diver who sets out in the black waters off Monterey, California, to recover from the ocean floor the remains of his late father, Mitt (Josh Brolin). The pair had a fractured, even abusive, relationship, depicted in a series of flashbacks, until Mitt chose to end his life in the sea rather than succumb to a terminal case of cancer. When Jay encounters a giant squid being chased by a mammoth sperm whale, he’s unwittingly entangled in the former’s tentacles and swallowed up in one extended, terrifying sequence. What follows is 60 minutes of pure terror as Jay must escape from inside the whale’s stomach before his oxygen tank runs out, all while contending with stomach acid that melts his hands, changes in air pressure that blow out his ear drums and gases that cause him to hallucinate and imagine the whale and his father as one. “Survivors survive,” Mitt says in one flashback that Jay must draw upon to figure out his impossible escape.

It’s a message that feels particularly appropriate for Packard, a survivor who has somehow cheated death three times, including a near-drowning when he was 14 and a 2001 plane crash in Costa Rica that killed several people and left Packard lying injured on the jungle floor for two days before he was rescued. Oh, and the whale, of course.

The events of “Whalefall” are far more horrifying than what Packard endured, but after the movie ended, he said there were things to which he could still relate: the claustrophobia, the feeling of powerlessness, Jay’s will to live and his gradual acceptance that he may not. Other memories the film evoked were even more unique: “He was there where the tongue was contracting, and I could feel the tongue of my whale contracting on me, and the movements of this giant animal, so I could totally relate.”

20th Century Studios

After filming some promotional materials, Packard finishes his post-movie interview with me, because this is what Michael Packard does now: He shares his story. He went on Jimmy Kimmel’s show the week after the incident, posing somewhat unwillingly in a mock whale’s mouth. He made a reporter with Australia’s edition of “60 Minutes” cry in amazement. He participated in a documentary titled “ In The Whale ” that Packard hopes will now get picked up by a streaming platform. He tells his story again and again. He’s happy to. It’s part of what gives his life meaning.

As Brolin’s character explains in one of the film’s flashbacks, a whale fall is the marine biology term used to describe the death and sinking of a whale, and the delicate ecological dance that ensues. When it lands on the ocean floor, a whale’s carcass is stripped of tissue by scavengers. Its organic compounds enrich the nearby sediments for years. Its skeleton becomes a new home for other creatures that can live there for decades. There’s a cosmic beauty to the process: the idea that good can come from something dark.

Packard feels this, too. He knows what his story does to people, how it astonishes them as they try to wrap their heads around something so unfathomable, how the scale of it can feel overwhelmingly impossible — bigger than any movie. Biblical. Primal . A reminder of just how small, and yet just how big, we really are.

“I love to give people that sense of wonder and awe,” he says. “It feels good to make other people feel good.”

迈克尔·帕卡德想让大家知道，他不是被鲸鱼吞了——而是被困在了鲸鱼的嘴里。是的，他知道鲸鱼咬紧牙关时那种撕咬的感觉，也知道咬下去之后里面有多么黑暗。他知道鲸鱼的舌头是什么感觉，它是如何扭动的。他知道在鲸鱼的嘴里拼命挣扎是什么感觉，也知道当你直面死亡时，这种挣扎是多么徒劳，就像一只苍蝇在你身上敲打，乞求饶恕。但是……“我没有被吞下！”他在时代广场一家电影院向包括演员乔什·布洛林和奥斯汀·艾布拉姆斯在内的观众解释道，“我被困在它的嘴里了。”

“真的吗？！”布洛林目瞪口呆地问道，似乎惊呆了。

抛开那些超现实的语义不谈，现年62岁的帕卡德或许是历史上唯一一个真正有资格对新电影《鲸落》（Whalefall）发表权威评论的人。在这部电影中，艾布拉姆斯饰演一名潜水员，试图重现帕卡德在2021年的壮举：从鲸鱼体内逃脱。这部将于周五在全美上映的电影，其设定被形容为疯狂、荒诞，甚至愚蠢。然而，帕卡德本人就在这里——一个活生生的约拿。

《鲸落》并非改编自帕卡德的真实故事，但某种程度上来说，它与帕卡德的经历有着千丝万缕的联系。此前曾发生过几起皮划艇爱好者声称自己被鲸鱼短暂吞入体内的事件，其中包括2020年发生的一起持续数秒的遭遇。普利策奖得主丹尼尔·克劳斯表示，这起事件是他2023年出版的同名书籍的主要灵感来源，而该书后来被改编成了电影《鲸落》。（克劳斯还与导演布莱恩·达菲尔德共同创作了这部电影的剧本。）但帕卡德的经历是唯一有记录的案例：一名潜水者被地球上体型最大、最古老的动物之一吞入腹中，并被困在体内相当长的时间。

Marco Postigo Storel/CNN

《鲸落》和帕卡德的经历有很多相似之处。它们都是关于生存的故事，关于海洋生活的故事，关于父子情的故事，以及我们每个人内心深处都存在的那种原始恐惧——被某种比我们自身更强大的力量吞噬，尽管这听起来似乎不可能。它们提醒我们，我们的生命和死亡或许蕴含着比我们意识到的更深远的意义。但是，在看完这部电影，看到人们在帕卡德讲述他的故事时脸上流露出的理解和感悟之后，我们逐渐意识到，将两者联系在一起的最根本的原因在于，故事讲述对我们人类所具有的强大影响力。

“我不知道该怎么形容，伙计。我不能让人们感到快乐，但我能让他们……惊叹，”帕卡德说。“惊叹。这会激起人们很多情感。”

2021年6月11日清晨，帕卡德进行了当天的第二次潜水。此前，他已经从家乡普罗温斯敦附近的海域捕获了满满一袋活龙虾。对于一个从12岁起就痴迷于海洋的人来说，龙虾潜水似乎是顺理成章的职业选择。12岁时，他的单身母亲攒够了钱，给他买了第一艘小船。水下世界一片宁静。帕卡德可以放空思绪，摆脱冬季的抑郁情绪。他只需要专注于捕猎。“这能让我回到那种状态——那种原始的状态，”他说。然而，身处水下也并非没有代价。你可以捕猎，但你也是猎物。大白鲨在科德角附近的海域出没，即使偶尔能看到它们，帕卡德也必须将这种威胁抛诸脑后，否则他将无法继续工作。

Merrily Cassidy/Cape Cod Times/USA Today Network/Imagn Images

那天早上，他从水里把袋子递给了他的船员约西亚·梅奥，梅奥当时正在帕卡德的船“Ja'n J”号上，这艘船以他两个十几岁的儿子雅各布和约西亚的名字命名。（这么多圣经里的J开头的名字，如果不是不祥之兆的话，那也绝非虚言。）然后，当他再次下水准备跑一趟时，突然感觉像被一列货运列车撞了一下。海水在他周围奔涌，眼前一片漆黑。“鲨鱼终于咬到我了，”他心想，但随即意识到自己感觉不到被咬。相反，他意识到，自己正被重重地压着。

他胡乱挥舞着手臂，感觉自己被某种生物的嘴巴紧紧包裹着，坚硬而深邃。那生物的颚正用力地压着他的躯干，他的双腿则从嘴里伸了出来。尽管眼前的情景令人难以置信，帕卡德却知道，这片区域只有一种生物体型足够大，能把他一口吞下：那就是座头鲸。

座头鲸体重可达40吨，体长可达60英尺，它们是须鲸，以巨大的颚部像渔网一样捕食小型猎物——通常是磷虾和浮游生物，当然不会捕食人类——它们不用牙齿咀嚼，而是通过角蛋白板进行滤食。由于这头鲸鱼剧烈挣扎，帕卡德意识到自己被误抓了起来。鲸鱼和他一样困惑。

撞击的冲击力最初将帕卡德的呼吸调节器咬嘴（用于连接氧气罐的呼吸器）撞了出来，他伸手到后面找到咬嘴，把它塞了回去。重新能够呼吸后，他试图敲击鲸鱼的嘴壁，想把自己推出去，但很快意识到嘴壁纹丝不动，便放弃了。

在绝望之中，他能感觉到那条巨大的舌头在他全身搏动。“它在我身上收缩，挤压，然后松开，”帕卡德回忆道。“感觉如何？感觉就像我被一个活物吞噬了一样。”

帕卡德知道，由于角蛋白板的存在，座头鲸不可能真正吞下他，所以他不会从嘴里游到胃里被消化掉。但一个可怕的念头很快涌上心头：“我的天哪，难道我要在这里待上45分钟，直到我窒息而死吗？”这让我更加害怕。45分钟，而这家伙就这么游来游去，直到我窒息而死。

帕卡德确信自己即将死去，他想到了自己的儿子们，想到自己的死会给他们带来怎样的打击，他会想成为怎样的父亲来弥补自己从未拥有过的父亲，却最终失去了他们。他想到了自己的母亲，想到她会多么伤心欲绝。他心想——嗖的一声。

突然，帕卡德重获自由。鲸鱼在嘴里待了大约30到45秒后，浮出水面把他吐了出来，激起巨大的水花，帕卡德被抛向空中，他的船员和附近另一名水手目睹了这一切。

当梅奥把他拉上船时，帕卡德崩溃了，泪流满面，惊恐万分，膝盖的疼痛和灵魂深处的痛苦让他发出尖叫：“我当时想，‘约西亚，我竟然在鲸鱼嘴里！我的天哪！我活下来了！我还活着！’”

五年多过去了，帕卡德站在熙熙攘攘的时代广场中央，一块巨大的电影《鲸落》（Whalefall）广告牌下。我们受邀参加了由Reddit和迪士尼联合举办的试映会，部分演员也出席了。迪士尼曾出品过上一部以鲸鱼体内角色为主角的大片：1940年的《木偶奇遇记》（Pinocchio）。

在放映前的招待会上，帕卡德一遍又一遍地向遇到的每个人讲述他的故事的简略版本。我一次又一次地看到他们惊叹不已。当人们排队等候在模型抹香鲸里拍照时，我们向他们解释帕卡德是谁，他们都惊讶地回过神来。

担心这部电影可能会引发他的心理创伤（尤其考虑到我们是在Regal 4DX影院观看，那里的座椅会移动，还会像坐过山车一样喷水），我向帕卡德保证他可以随时离场。他坦白说，看预告片的时候他“浑身发抖”，但喝了几杯啤酒壮胆后，他向我保证自己没事的。

《鲸落》并非一部轻松愉快的电影——因为它精湛地展现了令人窒息的原始恐怖。影片讲述了年轻潜水员杰伊（艾布拉姆斯饰）的故事。他前往加州蒙特雷附近漆黑的海域，试图从海底打捞已故父亲米特（乔什·布洛林饰）的遗骸。父子俩关系破裂，甚至充满虐待，影片通过一系列闪回展现了这段经历。最终，米特选择投海自尽，而非死于绝症。杰伊在片中遭遇了一只被一头巨大的抹香鲸追逐的巨型鱿鱼，他不慎被鱿鱼的触手缠住，并在一段漫长而恐怖的场景中被吞噬。接下来的60分钟是纯粹的恐怖，杰伊必须在氧气耗尽前逃出鲸鱼的胃里。他不仅要对抗腐蚀双手的胃酸、震破耳膜的气压变化，还要忍受导致他产生幻觉的气体，甚至将鲸鱼和父亲融为一体。“幸存者才能活下去，”米特在一段闪回中说道，杰伊必须依靠这句话才能找到逃脱的办法。

对于帕卡德来说，这番话显得格外贴切。他是一位幸存者，曾三次死里逃生，其中包括14岁时的一次溺水事故，以及2001年在哥斯达黎加发生的一起飞机失事——那次事故造成多人死亡，帕卡德本人也身负重伤，在丛林地面躺了两天后才获救。哦，当然，还有那条鲸鱼。

《鲸落》中的情节远比帕卡德的遭遇更加恐怖，但电影结束后，他说有些东西他仍然感同身受：幽闭恐惧症、无力感、杰伊的求生意志以及他逐渐接受自己可能无法活下去的现实。这部电影唤起的其他记忆则更加独特：“他当时就在那里，鲸鱼的舌头正在收缩，我能感觉到我的鲸鱼的舌头也在收缩，我能感受到这头巨兽的动作，所以我完全能理解他。”

二十世纪影业

拍完一些宣传片后，帕卡德结束了与我的电影后采访，因为这就是迈克尔·帕卡德现在做的事：分享他的故事。事发一周后，他上了吉米·坎摩尔的脱口秀节目，略显不情愿地钻进一个模拟鲸鱼嘴里。他让澳大利亚版《60分钟》的记者惊叹不已，甚至流下了眼泪。他还参与拍摄了一部名为《鲸鱼之中》的纪录片，帕卡德希望这部纪录片能被流媒体平台选中播出。他一遍又一遍地讲述着自己的故事。他乐于这样做。这赋予了他生命意义的一部分。

正如布洛林饰演的角色在影片的一段闪回中所解释的那样，“鲸落”是海洋生物学中用来描述鲸鱼死亡沉没以及随之而来的微妙生态变化的术语。当鲸鱼的尸体沉入海底时，食腐动物会啃食掉它的组织。它的有机化合物会在数年内滋养附近的沉积物。它的骨骼则成为其他生物的新家园，这些生物可以在那里生活数十年。这个过程蕴含着一种宇宙般的奇妙之美：它展现了美好的事物可以从黑暗中诞生。

帕卡德也有同感。他深知自己的故事会给人们带来怎样的影响，当人们试图理解如此深不可测的事物时，它会如何令他们震惊，它的规模又会如何令人感到难以承受——比任何电影都宏大。如同圣经故事一般。原始而震撼。它提醒我们，我们是多么渺小，又是多么伟大。

“我喜欢带给人们那种惊奇和敬畏的感觉，”他说。“让别人感到快乐，我感觉也很好。”