Netflix Drops Into the Cold With ‘Below’

Netflix has added another creature story to its catalogue with “Below,” a six-episode limited series led by Josh Hartnett, Mackenzie Davis and Charlie Heaton, and The Playlist’s review argues that this one has the patience its premise needs.

Set in the Newfoundland town of Snook’s Arm, “Below” folds supernatural menace into a community already living with something less cinematic and more corrosive: decline. According to The Playlist, the series opens with a disaster tied to a family relocating its home by barge, then jumps forward to Hartnett’s Calvin, a survivor still shaped by that trauma and still trying to keep his household solvent after the local fishing industry collapses. That matters because the show’s central threat is not dropped into a vacuum. It arrives in a place where people are already negotiating what stays, what goes and who gets priced out of continuity.

The review points to an iceberg, a disappearance and the discovery of flamingo remains as early signs that the sea is not behaving properly. Calvin’s investigation draws in Davis’s zoologist Fonda, while Heaton’s Wade becomes one of the show’s more unsettling instruments. The Playlist describes the pacing as deliberately measured, with the series holding back the full creature reveal and relying instead on accumulating unease, bizarre behavior and local tension.

That restraint is the interesting commercial and creative choice here. Streaming horror can have a nasty habit of confusing mythology with momentum, as if enough lore will substitute for rhythm. If The Playlist’s account is fair, “Below” goes in the opposite direction: fewer episodes, less flab, and a willingness to let dread do the expensive work. Even the comparison points feel revealing. “Jaws” is in the water, obviously, but the review also places “Below” closer to small-town suspense driven by social texture rather than pure monster spectacle.

The Playlist does note some accent inconsistency from Hartnett and Davis, but credits both performances with giving the series an emotional centre. It singles out Heaton in particular as a near scene-stealer. The larger compliment is sharper: “Below” apparently understands that a creature feature becomes more persuasive when the people on shore have something to lose besides their lives.