Spoilers ahead. Below is a limited series about a sea monster that takes place in a tiny Canadian fishing village. Our opening scene is 40 years prior to the main story. Some Canucks are in a little motorized rowboat towing a small house across a large lake. We’re told in the opening text that the Canadian government sometimes forces people who live in remote areas to relocate because it’s too expensive to take care of them so far away. Something goes wrong with the tow, and the young Calvin Penny sees an enormous eye swim past him just below the surface of the water. Calvin’s dad steps off the boat to investigate what’s wrong with the house they’re trying to tow, and something pulls the house under the water. Calvin watches his father disappear into the lake.

I liked this opening. This is a reasonable way of introducing your monster. The threat is clearly real, but indistinct. Flash forward to 40 years later and a 50-year-old Calving Penny played by Josh Hartnett is meeting his adult daughter’s boyfriend during a ‘come home’ festival. There’s no issue here, Calvin likes the boyfriend. But Calvin wants his adult kids to move back to the tiny village to help him with his failing ice harvesting business so he can earn money to start a distillery. His adult kids want him to vote in favor of the buyout so he can start over elsewhere.

But strange things are happening. People keep disappearing. Calvin’s oldest son, whom he has forbidden from going out on the fishing boat, decides to go anyway with one of his dad’s rivals. As they’re harvesting ice from a glacier that broke loose due to global warming, an enormous tentacle comes out of the water and kills the boat’s owner. All doubt is removed; it’s an enormous giant squid. The rest of the show will be everyone else slowly finding out. One of the first to do so is the lead researcher at an environmental science research station, Dr. Fonda Howander. Dr. Howander realizes almost immediately that the ice which has been brought in for sale to the local vodka distillery is contaminated with biological material from a previously unknown cephalopod species. We learn later that this science research station is funded by the Crocker family, the evil corporate interest that not-so-secretly pushes for the town’s relocation. Meanwhile a mysterious iceberg
has drifted into the bay the town depends on for all their commerce.

So that’s the skeleton of the story. The meat is the family dynamic. The Penny family are all trying to move forward with their lives in different ways. Daughter Ruby and her boyfriend want to get married and move to the city. Rebellious Charlie wants to be taken seriously as a boatman and Jay is in debt to gangsters and needs the buy-out money to pay off his debt. All these threads are handled very well and none of them overstay their welcome. The monster story is never overshadowed by their personal drama. The squid becomes a very un-subtle stand in for the environmental deterioration that’s killing the fisherman’s way of life and helping the corrupt Crocker family leverage them out of their homes. Many twists and turns follow. One that I particularly liked (and won’t describe here) serves to show that even the best of intentions can become corrupt. Howander eventually determines that this iceberg is the creature’s nest where she’s stored her egg sack, thus the violence against the humans in the area. This was a cool reveal and it tied things together neatly. But I felt more tense and alert to the story before this happened. Back when it was just a rampaging sea monster, it felt more dangerous.

My only complaint is the ending. Sticking the landing is hard and Below does the best it can but the last second maneuverings by the good guys to avert a crisis have some problems. Their plan is implausible and really has no business succeeding. The villainous Crocker family patriarch at one point tries to bully a Canadian military officer into using a helicopter air strike to kill the squid (known as ‘Mother’ to some locals who have been acquainted with her for [apparently] decades). But while the Crocker family has established their authority on the island by lending helicopters to help ‘evacuate’ the townsfolk they want to get rid of…at no point does the Crocker family patriarch have any leverage over this military officer. He’s simply an angry civilian shouting at a man with actual authority…I’m also not clear on why Crocker wants the squid killed. If it’s alive then that’s a real danger that requires the evacuation. But if they kill it…then can’t the townsfolk just come back? The eventual resolution is that Calvin Penny and his adult kids mount a mini-coup against the occupying Canadian military intervention force and tow the iceberg out to deep water where, and I’m not making this up, the squid dies naturally because that’s what squids do when their eggs are about to hatch…which they do, and subsequently die because the water is too warm for them to survive. So this heroic effort was all for nothing? The squid was about to die anyway and now she just does that somewhere humans aren’t bothering her and thus the body count stops climbing? In summary, the ending needs some work.

All in all, I loved Below. Nobody felt like they were acting. The action was (mostly) measured and very believable. The twists and turns weren’t telegraphed so you do in fact find them surprising. The ending, as I said, is a little clunky but it was so sincere I couldn’t find it in my heart to get angry about it.

So that’s a strong recommendation from me. Enjoy Below at your earliest convenience.