Below is now on Netflix, and it is a small, confident surprise: a sea monster thriller that spends as much time on a grieving family as it does on whatever is moving under the water. Josh Hartnett plays Calvin Penney, a fisherman in a tight-knit Newfoundland town, holding his children together after his own father's death long before anything starts circling the harbor.
Creator Jesse McKeown married into a Newfoundland family and had wanted to shoot something there for years. Below is not adapted from a book, a true story or any existing franchise, which is rare for a genre series this size, and McKeown used that freedom to build the whole show around the coastline instead of bolting a monster onto a generic small town. The cast and crew filmed on location around Conception Harbour, Brigus South and Bacon Cove, with the icebergs shot separately near Fogo and Twillingate, and the result feels like an actual place rather than a backlot.
Hartnett is the anchor, playing Calvin as a man more wary of his own history than of anything in the water, while Charlie Heaton and Mackenzie Davis fill out a cast that leans heavily on Newfoundland actors for the accent and texture the setting needs. Directing duties rotate between Jamie Childs, Helen Shaver and Stephen Dunn, and the series holds its nerve: six episodes, one complete story, no stalling for a second season.
It plays closer to a slow-burn family drama with a monster at the edges than a straight creature feature, so go in patient rather than expecting a jump scare every ten minutes. Below is streaming now on Netflix.
