Josh Hartnett leads the below Netflix cast as Calvin Penney, and his first look at the harbor menace comes with a blunt question: “What da frig is goin’ on?” In Below, a six-part supernatural thriller set in Snook’s Arm, Newfoundland, the town’s ordinary fishing life gives way to something much stranger.
The object in the harbor is not treated like a simple mystery. Dr Fonda Howander calls it “one big frozen mucous membrane!” after Calvin first reacts with “Jumpin’ Jesus” and “Will ye look at dat!”
Snook’s Arm and the Penneys
Wade Penney, played by Charlie Heaton, sets the tone early with two lines that sound like local warning labels: “I tells ye, these waters can be deadly” and “It’s been one seafarin’ tragedy after another for us.” Jesse McKeown created the series, and the family history reaches back to 1986, when a seafarin’ tragedy dragged the Penney family’s cottage and their disconcertingly muscular grand pappy underwater by forces unknown. That backstory gives the new threat a family ledger, not just a monster-movie setup.
Josh Hartnett’s Calvin Penney is the viewer’s entry point because he reacts like a working fisherman before he reacts like a genre lead. The harbor object stinks “of ammonia,” which makes the reveal feel less like a tease and more like a contamination event, especially once the town’s trawlermen begin vanishing.
Mackenzie Davis and the Harbor
Mackenzie Davis plays Dr Fonda Howander, the one character willing to say out loud what the others are seeing. Her line, “It’s not an iceberg,” followed by “one big frozen mucous membrane!” is the series’ clearest signal that Below is not playing the premise as a straight creature feature. The setup moves fast from odd object to local emergency: bloodied body parts start bobbing ashore, and the harbor stops functioning as a backdrop.
That pace matters because Below is only six parts, so the story has to spend its time on escalation rather than explanation. The result is a compact season shape: introduce the object, mark the disappearances, then push the Penneys toward whatever is inside the thaw.
Climate Notes in Below
The review gives Below a split reading. On one hand, it points to a massive squid unleashed by the thawing of ancient Arctic permafrost and to a struggling Newfoundland fishing community under pressure. On the other, it says the eco theme is “so far down in the mix as to be virtually inaudible,” with only fleeting references to warming oceans and “systems breaking apart.”
That tension leaves the series in an unusual spot for a horror title: the environmental angle is present enough to color the setting, but not strong enough to run the show. For viewers, the immediate value is simpler than the metaphor. Below looks built around the Penneys, a dead-stinking harbor, and a threat that keeps moving from eerie to physical before anyone in Snook’s Arm can make sense of it.
