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Somewhere in the depths of BELOW's six episode arc is a decent 2 hour eco-mystery/giant sea monster thriller begging to be hatched.
Alas, you have to wade through 6 uneven and rambling episodes to find any hint of treasure. And that might be too strong a word.
Josh Hartnett (Verity, Pearl Harbor), who I'm enjoying seeing once again all over the large and small screen, is enjoyable as local fisherman Calvin Penney. As the series opens, we meet him as young man on a boat with his family, towing their entire house across a foggy bay to relocate.
Tragedy strikes in the form of the biggest giant squid I've seen since "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea". Ok, maybe since last week in "Whalefall" if we're getting technical.
The film then flashes forward to present day, where Calvin is somehow still holding down his home in the same tiny, secluded and very poor town, whose citizens are basically surviving off each other.
His son Wade (a very good Charlie Heaton from "Stranger Things") is the only child still home, but Wade's brother Jay (Rohan Campbell), sister Mary (Ruby Stokes) and her fiance Noah (Kaleb Horn) are coming back to the island for "Come Home Year", one of those tiny town celebrations that often seem to take place in the movies.
Calvin's sister Ruth (Willow Kean) is the town's harbormaster, although the amount of traffic and commerce seems to be reaching an all-time low.
And that squid is back in a big way.
What the series gets right are some really intriguing moments and surprises. The arrival of a massive iceberg in their tiny harbor is a visual stunner and grabbed me.
The squid attacks are absolutely brutal, far more graphic that PG-13 "Jaws" territory and are a lot of monster thriller fun.
Hartnett is terrific as Calvin, a hard working man just trying to protect his family and the only town he's ever known. Hartnett's accent is sometimes distracting but I have to admire his commitment to it. Sometimes all the locals converse in dialogue that makes me feel like I'm watching another planet. It's more charming than off putting in the long run.
In the second episode we meet Dr. Fonda Howander (who the hell is making up these names?), a scientist at a nearby science foundation. She's got some interesting theories brewing about why our giant squid is so near the coast. Mackenzie Davis, who was so good in the underappreciated "Terminator: Dark Fate" is good as the doc, but she's saddled with some really bad dialogue that made me laugh out loud at the wrong moments.
I did enjoy seeing Natasha Henstridge of "Species" fame as a local woman who's having a romance with the much younger Jay Penney. Maybe he's got fond memories of watching 'Species" over and over again in 1995 too!
By episode 4, you can feel the story straining to fill its borders, so we get an onslaught of outsiders in a well funded research ship that arrive and manage to get both Calvin and Wade aboard. The ship's captain is played by Australian actor David Wenham, in a performance that can only be called "full tilt".
The whole episode aboard the submersible is just silly and plays like a fever dream of a drunken sailor. But it's tame compared to episode five, called "Little Pot Rock".
It takes place on a separate island that makes no sense other than as a vehicle to serve up one secret and some horror elements to Calvin. About twenty minutes into it, I started thinking about the Gilligan's Island episode when the entire Harlem Globetrotters team showed up on the island. That's how much sense this episode makes to the rest of the series.
Things recover a tiny bit in the finale, before stumbling badly once again.
I'm not sure there is one cliche uncovered, but I enjoyed the scenes with the squid and Hartnett's everyman hero scenes. Special effects range from decent to a bit laughable.
After a decent start in it's first two episodes, the sheer weight of some of the wild secondary story lines at least one major plot hole drag the series to the depths BELOW, all the way to a C-.
If you want to see a GREAT series about people in a small town on the coast haunted by something truly terrifying, go directly to "Midnight Mass" on the Netflix menu. Now THAT is a superb series. BELOW is all wet.
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