‘Below’ Reels In a Winner With Its Small-Town Sea Creature Saga [Season Review]

“Here’s to the great unknown and us fools chasing it.”

Coastal horror is a foreboding subgenre that’s having a bit of a renaissance at the moment. It’s territory that feeds into intense feelings of isolation, decay, and folkloric myths that attempt to rationalize the illogical. Sea monsters are not a requirement of coastal horror, but there have been some incredibly effective genre stories that explore this idea, like The Abyss, Dagon, and Underwater. Netflix’s Below is cut from the same cloth and functions like an extended Creepshow or X-Files episode, in the best way possible. A committed cast, distinct location, and a tight, economical season all help Below excel as standout sea creature fiction and one of fall’s biggest horror surprises

Set in the sleepy, remote Newfoundland coastal community of Snook’s Arm, Calvin Penney (Josh Hartnett) is a stubborn fisherman who is used to fighting to protect his family and his community’s old-fashioned way of life. However, this fight becomes literal when a cryptic sea creature emerges and triggers a slew of abnormal environmental conditions and erratic behavior within the community. There’s a brief tide of mystery that surrounds Snook’s Arm’s supernatural anomaly, but it’s in Below’s favor to quickly defuse this puzzle and reveal that an enormous squid – not the Loch Ness Monster, mermaids, or some urban legend cryptid – is at the center of this story.

Below cultivates a proper sense of history and context for its giant cephalopod that thematically reinforces the series’ messaging on community. Its migration and emergence are byproducts of climate change, not some radical paranormal explanation that dips into cosmic horror. The truth, in some ways, is even more terrifying. Below takes its captivating sea-creature angle and combines it with a quirky small-town mystery and family homecoming reminiscent of Jaws or Stephen King, even if it ultimately tackles a completely different kind of peril that’s more in line with the work of Bong Joon Ho.

This giant cephalopod is a terrifying disruption to the status quo. It also inspires deeper commentary on locals versus outsiders and how these sea creature warnings are interpreted as attempts to erase culture as industry co-opts the community. It’s material that’s appropriate in a series like this and never feels too preachy. uses all this to reflect upon greed, hubris, and entitlement, particularly when these ideals come into conflict with Snook’s Arm’s quaint authenticity. There’s also some profound commentary on humanity’s tenuous relationship with nature and how important it is to maintain balance and respect, lest the whole world go off-kilter.