The Whale (2022)

Reading the screenplay for The Whale (2022) feels a little like being trapped in a room with nothing but human emotion.

Most of the story takes place inside one apartment over a handful of days. And still, the script feels enormous.

That’s what makes it such an interesting script to study.

What surprised me most while reading it was how much power came from the script’s simplicity. Samuel D. Hunter builds the story entirely around strong characters, emotional tension, and a clear focus.

Here are three things The Whale does really well, and what writers can learn from it.

One of the easiest ways to flop a scene is to have characters who are just… hanging around.

In underdeveloped scripts, supporting characters often exist only to help the protagonist or explain the plot. In The Whale, every character enters the story with their own emotional agenda. And it makes the dialogue feel strong and believable.

Charlie (Brendan Fraser) wants redemption and connection before it’s too late. Ellie (Sadie Sink) wants attention, honesty, and maybe even revenge. Liz (Hong Chau) wants to protect Charlie while simultaneously expressing years of anger and exhaustion. Thomas (Ty Simpkins) wants spiritual salvation. Mary (Samantha Morton) wants closure.

Because everyone wants different things, almost every conversation starts to feel emotionally charged.

Take Charlie and Ellie’s scenes, for example. On paper, it’s just a father trying to reconnect with his daughter. But emotionally, it’s much messier than that. Charlie wants love and forgiveness. Ellie wants control, to force him to confront the damage he caused.

That clash of goals creates tension without the script needing external drama.

Check out how that dynamic plays out in this scene, where Charlie meets Ellie for the first time in years.

Another thing the script does well is ensuring that none of the characters feel random.

Every character is emotionally tied to Charlie in some way. The story has no “extra” people wandering in from disconnected subplots.

Ellie is Charlie’s daughter. Mary is his ex-wife. Liz is tied to Charlie through her brother Alan. Thomas is connected to the religious world surrounding Alan’s past.

This creates a script that feels tight. Every scene reveals another side of Charlie because each character sees him differently.

To Ellie, he’s a failed father. To Liz, he’s someone she both loves and resents. To Thomas, he’s a soul worth saving. To Mary, he’s a painful memory that never fully healed.

Because of that, every interaction also deepens the same central emotional wound instead of distracting from it.

A lot of movies lose momentum because they split attention between too many unrelated threads. The Whale does the opposite and keeps tightening the emotional knot.

A good reminder for writers: if a character can disappear from the story without changing its emotional core, they probably don’t belong there.

It might sound harsh, but it’s worth remembering. Kill your darlings.

The script does a great job turning what seem as limitations into pressure points.

The entire story happens in an apartment, between a few characters, in five days. That’s basically it.

And yet it all feels intense.

The apartment becomes more than just a setting. We can see it as a space of emotional confinement. Charlie can’t really escape the people confronting him, and the audience can’t escape the emotional tension either.

The lack of constant location changes actually forces us to focus harder on the characters.

Every entrance into the apartment matters, and each conversation shifts the emotional temperature slightly. The setting stays the same, but the emotional dynamics evolve scene by scene.

That’s incredibly difficult to pull off.

Many scripts rely on spectacle to maintain momentum, but The Whale shows that emotional progression can be just as gripping as physical action.

It also demonstrates that minimalism creates focus.

When you strip away distractions, it’s easier to start paying attention to the small things, like pauses, body language, emotional vulnerability, and what characters refuse to say.

The Whale understands something a lot of modern scripts forget: bigger is not always better. Sometimes a story becomes more powerful when it narrows its focus instead of expanding it.

Its strength comes from:

• Characters with clear goals,
• Interconnected relationships,
• And minimalist storytelling.

For me, that’s what makes the script so effective. Instead of relying on spectacle or external complexity (e.g., dynamic mechanics or elaborate worldbuilding), it lets the characters carry the emotional weight.