Below (2026)
Synopsis: A sea creature threatens a Newfoundland fishing community.
Stars: Josh Hartnett, Mackenzie Davis, Charlie Heaton, Natasha Henstridge, Joshua Close, Rohan Campbell, Willow Kean, Ruby Stokes, Kaleb Horn, Mary Walsh
Director: Jamie Childs, Helen Shaver, Stephen Dunn
Creator/showrunner: Jesse McKeown
Rated: TV-MA
Running Length: Six Episodes
Movie Review in Brief: Below opens with a haunting image of a house floating across Newfoundland’s open water, then buries its sea monster under hunters, scientists, developers, a thief and a festival. Hartnett and Davis do what they can, but the accents wander and the plot wanders further. Jaws knew one monster was enough.
Below on Netflix has too much above the surface
I swear, no one ever learns from Jaws. The shark mattered because Amity’s human problems kept putting people in its path. The town’s economy, its leadership, and Chief Brody’s fear all fed the same suspense. Watching Below on Netflix, I kept wishing its crowded island intrigue would find that kind of purpose. A monster can carry a story when the people around it give us reasons to care. Here, the people keep wandering into other stories, leaving the creature waiting for its turn.
Creator Jesse McKeown begins with a haunting image: a house being towed across Newfoundland’s chilly open water. The Penneys’ move from Little Pot Rock to Snooks Arm (great name) gives the opening more than a striking image. Their house is crossing open water, carrying a family toward a new home when trouble interrupts the journey. That sequence establishes mood and tension while making relocation feel precarious before we know much about the people involved. This prologue indicates a monster story worth staying home for and I was more than ready to settle in. Unfortunately, the show soon makes that harder than it should.
A house carries more than furniture
Floating a home across the water draws on Newfoundland’s actual resettlement history. Government programs encouraged outport residents to move toward communities with better access to services and employment, and some families took their houses with them. Those moves could offer practical benefits while severing connections to a place. The opening image carries both possibilities without needing a history lecture, making the family’s vulnerability feel bigger than the immediate threat beneath their boat.
In present-day Snooks Arm, fishing and harvesting ice from drifting icebergs keep the town going. It’s a way of life Calvin Penney (Josh Hartnett, Verity) hopes to pass down to his children, though the community is weighing another government resettlement offer. Some residents see a chance to start fresh; others see a price being put on everything they’d lose. Preparations for Come Home Year sharpen that conflict. The Newfoundland tradition welcomes former residents back, even as those still living there debate whether to leave.
Then a mysterious iceberg arrives, its harvested ice starts to smell wrong, and a couple of tourists go missing. Connecting the town’s drinking water to a possible threat is an especially good idea. The sea provides a livelihood, but the community’s dependence on it also leaves everyone exposed. That tension gives Below its eco-horror potential, while the isolated setting and buried secrets suggest an Atlantic variation on True Detective: Night Country. The climate anxiety comes through in that changing relationship with the water, without requiring the creature to be explained as a direct consequence of climate change.
The family needs an introduction
Almost immediately, though, showrunner Jesse McKeown’s scripts begin treating us like returning residents who already know the local history. I was nearly through the first episode before I realized Calvin was a widower raising three children. His gangly, sunken-eyed son Wade (Charlie Heaton, Stranger Things) first appears tearing around town on an ATV, with little context to help establish his place in the family. We’re trying to understand a new threat while still sorting out relationships the show seems to consider old news.
Hartnett gives Calvin a gruff, stubborn decency that’s easy to root for, and Heaton brings a restless energy that suits Wade. But the actors can only do so much when the connections between scenes remain unclear. Their performances need the writing to establish what these people mean to one another, especially when Calvin’s desire to preserve the family’s livelihood is supposed to carry emotional weight.
Then there are the accents, which I’m honestly not emotionally ready to discuss yet. The Newfoundland dialect challenges much of the cast, slipping in and out frequently enough to interrupt the performances. Hartnett’s shifts can be particularly abrupt, as though Calvin has changed ports between sentences. The issue is consistency: whenever the delivery suddenly changes, I’m listening to the effort behind the accent instead of what the character is saying.
Everybody wants a piece of the creature
As the trouble in the harbor grows, Calvin teams up with marine biologist Fonda Howander (Mackenzie Davis, Terminator: Dark Fate) to investigate. That pairing should give the mystery a clear direction, combining Calvin’s knowledge of the water with Fonda’s scientific expertise. Instead, the series keeps introducing competing agendas before making its existing relationships persuasive.
Steve Bruner (David Wenham, Faraway Downs) arrives with a research vessel and a hunter’s interest in whatever lurks below. He evokes Philip FitzRoyce’s showboating in Jaws 3-D more than Quint’s hard-earned authority. His alliance with scientist Dr. Hugo Sayed (Alexander Karim, Gladiator II) adds another set of motives to track. Meanwhile, developers push relocation, Calvin’s harbor-master sister Ruth (Willow Kean) tries to keep the community in check, and the Come Home Year festivities bring more people into a place that’s becoming increasingly unsafe.
There’s also an island thief whose activities depend on something important going missing, a development I swear the show never properly established. Calvin gets kidnapped more often than any man should, or would ever admit to. These complications might work if they deepened the creature mystery or tightened the pressure on the family. Too often, they send the story somewhere else entirely.
In fact, the monster has to fight the subplots for screen time. Its mythology starts getting neglected in favor of much less interesting island intrigue, and the series takes increasingly odd routes between developments. Characters change priorities without enough explanation, while separate plotlines stop respecting one another’s logic or logistics. Eventually, it feels as though a necessary middle episode has been left out.
The tide brings diminishing returns
The crowded storytelling hurts Davis most. Fonda is positioned as the second lead, yet she spends long stretches trying to assemble evidence while the series wanders off without her. Davis is usually one of the most interesting people on any screen, and watching her get sidelined is frustrating. Her character should help us understand the mounting deaths and strange behavior; instead, she’s often left waiting for the plot to need a scientist again.
Jan (Natasha Henstridge, Species) has a similar problem. Early scenes suggest a character headed toward a meaningful arc, but her purpose seems to change from one episode to the next. Henstridge’s glamour also makes her stand apart from the rugged fishermen and dock workers. That contrast could tell us something about Jan, but the shifting characterization never gives it much purpose.
There’s considerably more assurance behind the camera. Cinematographers William Baldy, Guy Godfree, and Bobby Shore give the Newfoundland coastline convincing scale and an imposing presence. Directors Jamie Childs, Helen Shaver, and Stephen Dunn have a setting that can make a house crossing the water feel vulnerable before anything attacks it. The opening understands how to turn that landscape into suspense.
Composer Mark Korven, whose credits include The Witch and The Lighthouse, brings further horror experience to the production. But the strongest visual and musical choices still need a story that sustains their tension. Across six episodes, the scripts keep pulling us away from the water just as it becomes interesting. Below knows how to make the sea look threatening but it has far more trouble making the people on shore behave as though they inhabit the same story.
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