Below Netflix Series: 5 Thrilling Reasons It Hooks You

The Below Netflix series arrives wrapped in cable knit, sea fog and fishermen’s folklore. It may be the most stylish way to be frightened this season. Created by Jesse McKeown, the thriller drops us into a remote Newfoundland fishing village where the tide has turned against the locals, and where every wardrobe choice seems to have been made by someone who has never met a flannel they didn’t love.

At the centre stands the Penney clan, a family whose bad luck is practically heirloom. Josh Hartnett plays Calvin, a weathered widower with a permanent squint. Charlie Heaton plays Wade, his jittery relative, who serves breakfast to holidaymakers while delivering ominous warnings about the water. The family’s tragedies stretch back to a 1986 disaster that swallowed their cottage whole, and they have only multiplied since. Fishing restrictions, financial uncertainty and a government resettlement plan now threaten the community’s future.

Then the harbour delivers something stranger: a colossal, ghostly iceberg that smells distinctly of ammonia. Fishermen begin to disappear. Remains wash up on the shore. Something enormous stirs beneath the surface. Enter Mackenzie Davis as Dr Fonda Howander, a marine scientist with a gift for deadpan delivery, who delivers the verdict that the “iceberg” is really a mass of frozen mucus. Calvin’s reaction, a slow and visibly painful dawning, is a small masterclass in comic restraint.

The culprit, we learn, is a giant squid freed from ancient permafrost. Here the Below Netflix series gestures towards a climate parable, with passing mentions of warming seas and collapsing ecosystems. Yet the message barely registers above the roar of revving motorbikes and the show’s affectionate nods to classic creature features. Jaws, The Thing and The Fog all haunt the frame, with Stranger Things hovering nearby in its own nostalgic haze.

This is not a slow-burn eco-sermon. It is a gleefully old-school monster tale, complete with grisly set pieces and an unapologetically retro soundtrack. David Wenham, as a self-styled climate crusader with grand plans for the village and impeccably pressed trousers, is a delight. He clearly relishes every scene.

The series does stumble, however. By the fifth episode, a local legend about a sea hag is revealed to be nothing more than an ordinary woman named Maggie. Heaton sells the moment with gloriously unhinged conviction, but it signals trouble. In the final stretch, the show begins explaining away the oddities it spent four episodes cultivating, trading mystery for tidy logic. Having built a world of curses, mist and unnerving folklore, it seems oddly reluctant to embrace it.

Still, the details linger: the damp-weather palette, the waxed jackets, the plaid layered on plaid. Newfoundland has rarely looked so photogenic, or so perilous. The ensemble commits fully to the Atlantic dialect and the heightened melodrama, and the result is cosy and creepy in equal measure.

If the Below Netflix series never quite becomes the profound fable it occasionally threatens to be, it makes for hearty, unpretentious entertainment. Think of it as a monster movie in a chunky sweater: not subtle, not particularly deep, but very good company on a stormy evening. Pour something warm, pull on your most rugged knit, and wade in. Just keep an eye on the harbour.

Whether you come for the creature or stay for the cable knit, the Below Netflix series delivers a cosy, unpretentious kind of thrill. It may not rewrite the monster-movie rulebook, but its moody coastline, rugged layers and sheer commitment to plaid make it a worthy addition to your autumn watchlist. Pull on your chunkiest sweater, settle in with something warm, and let the fog roll in. Just don’t be surprised if you start eyeing your own wardrobe for a little more flannel afterwards.