There’s something dangerous moving through the waters off Newfoundland, and Josh Hartnett must keep his family and community from being pulled under in Netflix’s new limited series “Below.” The six-episode thriller combines a creature-feature premise with local folklore, family drama, and a fishing town struggling to preserve its vanishing way of life.
Hartnett stars as Calvin Penney, a big-hearted but stubborn fisherman still haunted by his father’s mysterious death decades earlier. When an unidentified sea creature begins terrorizing his hometown, Calvin teams with visiting marine researcher Fonda Howander, played by Mackenzie Davis, while trying to protect his son Wade, played by Charlie Heaton, and hold his fractured family together.
“I just always felt like I wanted to set something here, that this would be a great place for something big and something kind of epic,” creator and showrunner Jesse McKeown said of Newfoundland in a Tudum interview. “It’s such a unique landscape and such a rugged, dangerous, isolated, scary place in a lot of ways.”
The cast also includes Willow Kean, Ruby Stokes, Rohan Campbell, and Kaleb Horn. McKeown created the series, with Karen Walton, Perry Chafe, and Natty Zavitz serving as writers. Jamie Childs, Helen Shaver, and Stephen Dunn directed the episodes. Hartnett also executive produces alongside McKeown, Childs, Jessica Rhoades, Chris Hatcher, Louise Sutton, and Sharon Hall.
All six episodes of “Below” premiere October 8 on Netflix. Watch the trailer below.
Edward Davis is a senior film journalist and longtime contributor to The Playlist. Davis covers the full breadth of cinema — from major studio releases to independent and international film.
