Clever Netflix creature feature Below could be your next Widow’s Bay

If Widow’s Bay had added a kraken to its menagerie of the monstrous and the ghoulish, it might’ve looked something like Below. Like that Apple TV breakout, this taut Netflix miniseries captures the quirky personalities of a remote island community, but intertwines them with Lovecraftian monsters from the deep for a clever creature feature that launches a tale of climate change and corporate greed from a rock-solid dock of cultural authenticity. Anchored by a strong Josh Hartnett performance, it’s a show with a message that also never forgets to be goofily entertaining and memorably quirky. Creator Jesse McKeown values his characters as much as their predicament, leading to six episodes that make for a fun hang, even if their relative briefness leaves you wanting more. Then again, in the age of streaming bloat, a Netflix series that’s not only free of the typical plot sag but mostly shot in the bright sunlight feels as rare and awe-inspiring as the mysterious aquatic lifeforms at the center of Below.

Hartnett stars as Calvin Penney, an ice harvester in the Newfoundland village of Snook’s Arm, a real place off the coast of Canada that was resettled in 2018. Below opens with a young Calvin watching the Penney family home being moved across the water from one seaside location to another, only for it to get caught on something. His dad jumps from the boat to the floating abode, a choice that ends in a tragedy that will haunt Calvin for decades. Years later, and struggling to make ends meet due to the impact of climate change and pollution, Calvin’s latest haul seems dirty and somehow off, hinting at something unusual happening in the waters off Snook’s Arm. This catches the attention of a local scientist named Fonda Howander (Mackenzie Davis), who begins to examine what almost appears like a new amoebic presence in the ice. And that’s all before a massive iceberg appears on the horizon.

McKeown and his writers populate Snook’s Arm with memorable characters, most of them related to Calvin. There’s his supportive and headstrong sister Ruth, played by Newfoundlander Willow Kean, who adds some welcome local flavor to a cast who put on some entertaining but broad Canadian accents that sound like most of their research consisted of watching multiple episodes of Shoresy. There’s also the next generation of Penneys: Calvin’s daughter Mary (Ruby Stokes) and his sons Jay (Rohan Campbell) and Wade (Charlie Heaton). They all get subplots impacted by the main arc of the show, including a love interest who Mary brings home to meet the family and some debts that could get Jay in physical trouble. Of course, Stranger Things vet Heaton gets the most screen time, and he leans into a very different role than the one that made him famous, playing Wade as a goofy risk-taker who probably wouldn’t give soft-spoken Hawkins loner Jonathan Byers the time of day.

Early on, ice harvesting and local criminals take a back seat to an underwater kaiju, as the show really commits to its B-movie DNA. Before you know it, Calvin is on a submersible led by a team trying to track down the creature in a midsection that layers one surprise on top of another. Below often goes left when other programs would go right, especially in an extended interlude on an island even more remote that Snook’s Arm, where McKeown and company deftly weave together regional history, strong character work, and commentary on man’s relationship to the unknown.