Below

A "Mysterious Sea creature" terrorises a remote town in Newfoundland and a local fisherman must save the day, his town, and his acting career.

This containers spoilers, but it is probably better than watching the show.

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Introduction: Okay, so I like a limited series, because so many of the actual series end up mediocre or getting cancelled after a season or two. With a limited series, you know there is an end and you don't have to invest too much time or mental energy into it.

Elements

Below is a six-part limited series on Netflix, which sees the (relatively quiet these days) Josh Harnett playing Calvin, a fisherman in Newfoundland who lost his father in a mysterious accident on the water forty years prior. While one child Wade (Charlie Heaton from Stranger Things) lives with him, his other two children are home for the summer from wherever they were, one with her fiancé to introduce, the other with a mysteriously large debt to some inbreds.

There are a number of factors in play, with a research facility doing various analyses, a ship with Faramir (David Wenham) from LotR hunting the creature, a dastardly family trying to move all the town away from the area, and a lot of baggage from the past.

My Take

I am not sure where to start.

The first episode began okay and there was enough interesting setups to keep on watching, especially since it was the first episode and you can't expect too much from it. However, pretty soon, it degraded into a hodgepodge of mess, un-primed and unexplained side stories, inconsistent accents and bad acting. The cast itself was probably okay, but nothing ever really gelled together to develop a coherent story, and there was very little character development to connect me to anything much at all.

The premise of the creature, which was present due to climate change was fine for one of these Jaws-esque type productions, but it just didn't make much sense in the way things were handled. The military got involved (controlled by a small-town family apparently), a monster hunter ship arrived and needed a local guide for some unbeknownst reason. And the town made money from hauling in lumps of iceberg ice to make a local alcohol, where the water was affected and turned people into thirsty, suicidal, angry people. And of course, a hot older chick (Natasha Henstridge from Species) was in a relationship with one of the kids.

It was all over the place.

And this was before they headed back to where they came from forty years prior, and there was some random inbred family living there, doing weird stuff with a missing sailor from a Portuguese fishing ship, that had been taken by the beast in the water.

I just felt like they were trying to cram a thousand different storylines into the show with no clear direction on how any of them related to any of the others, or the main storyline. And the acting (or the direction and editing) didn't help matters, as there were scenes where I felt they did the first take and the director said "That'll do", despite it not doing at all.

It was very strange.

The positives

• I watched it on my second screen while doing other things.
• Josh Hartnett played his part pretty well, considering what he had to work with.
• Some of the scenery would look good in a photo.

My Verdict

As you can probably guess, I do not recommend sitting through six hours of this limited series, as the time would be better spent doing something more useful - anything would do. I found very few redeeming factors throughout the show and found myself critiquing it in real time, rather than trying to actually watch it. I should really have just recorded my thoughts at that point, because it likely would have been more scathing than this, but I can't bring myself to invest much more time into even thinking about it now. Perhaps, if you really like these monster movies, you might be able to stomach it, but you'd have to really like them.

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Taraz [ Gen1: Hive ]