Below Review

For years, the government of Canada paid families in small Newfoundland fishing villages to leave. The idea was to move people out of tiny outports and into larger towns. Many of those families still talk about it as the moment a whole way of life ended. Below, a new six-episode Netflix series with Josh Hartnett, takes that real piece of history and drops a sea creature into the middle of it.

All six episodes went live on October 8, 2026. Before that, the show opened the Primetime program at the Toronto International Film Festival in September. Early chatter out of Toronto framed it as a fresh spin on the old sea monster formula. Having read through the early coverage, I think that's a fair way to set expectations, as long as you know the creature is only half of the story.

The fisherman who never forgot

Hartnett plays Calvin Penney, a fisherman in the small coastal town of Snook's Arm. Calvin is stubborn and raising three kids on his own, and he has never really made peace with the day he lost his father as a boy, in a way that nobody in town could ever account for. He saw something out on the water that day, and it has followed him ever since.

Now the town is shrinking. Catches are down and young people keep moving away. Now officials want residents to accept a buyout and relocate. Calvin has been here before. The last time his family was told to move, his father died, so when the same kind of offer comes knocking again, he is in no mood at all to sign anything or even hear the pitch.

Come Home Year goes wrong

The plot kicks off during Come Home Year, a local tradition when people who left the island come back for a visit. Calvin's kids return. Wade, his oldest, played by Charlie Heaton, actually never left. Jay, the youngest son, played by Rohan Campbell, comes back after a long time away. So does his daughter Mary, played by Ruby Stokes. She arrives with her Montreal boyfriend Noah, played by Kaleb Horn, who seems badly unprepared for rural Newfoundland.

Then the shoreline starts producing things it shouldn't, and people in Snook's Arm begin dying with no clear cause that anyone, from the locals to the officials, can explain. Animals appear in the wrong places, including dead flamingos on a frigid beach. An iceberg also floats into the bay, and one early reviewer said it turns out to be "much more than just frozen water."

Enter Fonda, a marine researcher played by Mackenzie Davis. She and Calvin join forces to find out what is lurking offshore and what secrets the island has kept.

Why does Hartnett fit this role?

Hartnett has been rebuilding his career for a few years now, with parts in Oppenheimer and the thriller Trap. Below hands him a lead role shaped around his strengths. Calvin is no action hero. He's a loud, warm, pig-headed father who wants two things: his family close and his town alive.

Critics have noticed. Jack Giroux at What's on Netflix praised Hartnett's "brash but sensitive" performance. Hartnett himself has explained what pulled him in. He said it feels like the people making decisions about our lives are so distant that changing anything is hard. Watching regular people band together against that kind of power, he said, offered "a very satisfying level of wish fulfillment."

That comment explains a lot about the show. The creature is the danger you can point at. The buyout and the failing fishery are dangers no harpoon can touch. So are the emptying streets.

A crowded and familiar cast

Davis gives the story a scientist to balance Calvin's instincts. She has plenty of genre experience, from Halt and Catch Fire to Station Eleven, and she tends to do well in stories where the rules keep changing.

Heaton, who many viewers know as Jonathan Byers in Stranger Things, plays Wade, the son who stayed home. His bond with Calvin sits at the emotional core of the family plot. Willow Kean plays Calvin's sister Ruth, who also serves as the harbormaster. Natasha Henstridge plays Jan Hickey, the official running the resettlement plan. She also has a personal past with one of the Penney men.

David Wenham plays the leader of a research ship, and Alexander Karim plays a marine biologist. Both show up in Snook's Arm with their own reasons for wanting the creature. Mary Walsh, a well-known name in Newfoundland comedy, plays a local resident. Joshua Close plays Jaxon Noseworthy, a local officer.

Made on the island, by people who wanted it there

Jesse McKeown created the series and runs it as showrunner. His past credits include The Umbrella Academy and The Sinner. Both of those mixed genre thrills with tangled family drama, and Below follows the same path. Perry Chafe and Natty Zavitz are on the writing team. So is Karen Walton, who wrote the cult werewolf movie Ginger Snaps.

Three directors split the episodes: Jamie Childs, who has worked on The Sandman, Helen Shaver, who directed episodes of Station Eleven, and Stephen Dunn, who rounds out the group behind the camera. Hartnett also serves as an executive producer.

McKeown told Entertainment Weekly, "I always knew I wanted to make something here in Newfoundland." The production followed through. Cameras rolled in Newfoundland and Labrador from July to October 2025. Based on the early reviews, the setting is not decoration. It drives the whole thing.

History under the waterline

The smartest choice here is grounding the horror in something that really happened. After Newfoundland joined Canada, governments spent decades paying outport families to resettle in larger communities. The buyout facing Calvin's town mirrors that choice. Early TIFF coverage also said the series draws on a real story from the region.

The show touches on climate change too, and on how a warming ocean is reshaping life along the coast. A monster climbing out of the sea works well as a stand-in for all of these pressures at once. It's a neat trick, and it gives the scares more weight than a simple creature hunt would have.

Is it Jaws, or something stranger?

Reviewers have reached for big names. What's on Netflix compared it to Jaws, to John Carpenter's The Fog and to the 1970s horror film Messiah of Evil. All of those follow a tight community threatened by something from the water or the dark. Heaven of Horror brought up the Norwegian Netflix film Kraken, while making clear that Below is not a remake of it.

The Stranger Things comparison is hard to avoid with Heaton on board. Both shows put a family in a town where something monstrous breaks into daily life. The flavor is very different, though. Stranger Things runs on a warm glow of 1980s nostalgia that keeps even its scariest moments feeling a little cozy and familiar to most of its audience. Below runs on salt air and heavy fog, and it feels closer to an old folk tale than to pop culture.

What's on Netflix called it a "campfire-style tall tale." That label fits the official logline, which promises local myth mixed with suspense and humor. Think of the kind of story people tell at a kitchen party, half funny and half chilling.

Early verdicts

The first wave of reviews has been friendly. Dread Central's TIFF impressions called it an "atmospheric sea monster tale kept afloat by a bounty of charismatic performances." Heaven of Horror judged from the first two episodes that the series "deserves a Fresh rating," though it admitted uncertainty about where the plot was going. What's on Netflix suggested it could be a "breath of fresh air" for horror fans on the service.

Most praise lands on the mood and the actors. Early write-ups have said little about the creature itself. That could be clever restraint. It could also mean the writers care more about the Penneys than the monster. Likely a bit of each.

Who should press play

Each of the six episodes runs about an hour, so this is a manageable weekend watch, and since it's a limited series, you aren't signing up for a story that drags on for years with no ending in sight. The TV-MA rating makes it a poor pick for younger children.

Fans of nonstop creature action should adjust their hopes. Reviews point to a slower build that spends real time on the town and the family before the monster takes over. If you like settling into a place and its people, that pace will feel right. If you want a jolt every few minutes, it may test your patience.

I'll admit the location is the biggest draw for me. Big series set in Newfoundland are rare, and a monster story told with that accent, that weather and that history behind it is not something Netflix offers often. I would make it a priority this October. Pick a foggy night, start with the first episode, "Come Home Year," and maybe save the fish supper for another evening.