Writer/director/showrunner Jesse McKeown's six-part miniseries, Below, now streaming on Netflix, is a spinetingling saga about a giant squid. On the other hand, it's not just about a giant squid, but rather the dark, symbolic impact the creature has a little, Canadian town.
The series stars genre favorite Josh Hartnett as fisherman/iceberg tracker Calvin Penney, who lost his father during his youth to a mysterious force in the water. He still blames himself for that death, even as the town becomes plagued by an ineffable sickness. Other citizens, meanwhile, are snatched from sight, though we, of course, know that whipping tentacles are the frightful cause. To stain the situation further, a company wishes to move the inhabitants to another location, but why? What makes the land so valuable? Has greed prompted this horrid kraken's rise?
The performers make the mystery flow. In addition to Harnett, the prime line consists of Charlie (Stranger Things/The New Mutants) Heaton, MacKenzie Davis, Rohan Campbell, Ruby Stokes, Mary Walsh, David Wenham, Matthew Worko, Alexander Karim, Sean Doyle, Willow Kean, Kaleb Horn, Joel Thomas Hynes, Frank (Rabid) Moore and Natasha (Species) Henstridge.
For the most part, the astute McKeown keeps the episodes on thematic track, presenting a progressing reveal of its titanic specimen, similar to 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954), It Came from Beneath the Sea, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (1961), Tentacles and Peter Benchley's Jaws, The Beast and Creature. A later episode, however, "Little Pot Rock," takes an off-kilter turn, though its results create solid, character-driven psychedelia, while establishing (pardon the spoiler) its Gorgo-geared motif, which by default taps Jaws 3-D and Star Trek's "The Devil in the Dark," with a little Alien applied. (There are also moments when the plot grazes Mako: The Jaws of Death and Jaws: The Revenge, without pushing a wall-to-wall commitment to their behavioral mysticism.)
Below isn't a redefining entry in the sea-creature genre, but it does captivate. It's a monster fable, and on that basis should interest and satisfy those who appreciate such things. I know I did.🦈
