Below

“You can only imagine what they are putting in the water at Hollywood because this year the entertainment industry has decided the future of television is HP Lovecraft-style maritime horror with comedy trimmings. Far-fetched though that mishmash sounds, it is what propelled Apple’s Widow’s Bay to 14 wins at the recent Emmy awards. Now the formula comes up for air once again with Netflix’s timber-shivering creature-feature Below. Below, which stars former movie star Josh Hartnett as a Newfoundland fisherman stalked by a terror from the depths, isn’t quite an instant classic like Widow’s Bay. That show had its cake and scared it to death by being simultaneously hilarious and horrific. Below is great fun, but much more earnest by comparison. There is also an undertow of climate change preachiness that, by the end, threatens to capsize the entire enterprise (forget aquatic nasties – it turns out the biggest monster of all… is man!).”
Ed Power, Telegraph

“There is the suspicion that Below’s creator, Jesse McKeown, had intended the climate stuff to be … bigger? More series-defining? That is until, one imagines, the inevitable hand landed on his shoulder and a network pep talk that included an only half-joking mention of “woke” ensured this particular element sank like a CGI stone. What we get instead is an old-fashioned tale of sea monsters, isolation and plaid clad tenacity, replete with exploding viscera and goofy nods to such era-defining horrors as The Thing, The Fog and Stranger Things. It is, if you will, Widower’s Bay. And very enjoyable it is too, with much cable-knit daftness re sea hags and David “Lord of the Rings” Wenham having a whale of a time as a self-styled “climate change activist” whose plans for Snook’s Arm are as flagrant as his chinos. Below is hunky sea-fun that, for all its efforts to the contrary, still, quietly, #makesUthink. Come on in. The water’s ridiculous.”
Sarah Dempster, The Guardian