Below review – a killer snot-berg causes chaos for Josh Hartnett

Abandon all hope, ye who enter Below. And jettison disbelief while ye be at it. A six-part supernatural thriller forged from industrial-grade bunkum, Below is set in Snook’s Arm, a struggling Newfoundland fishing community beset by an ancient, unknowable evil. And plaid. And sea hags, shifty conservationists, mist, motorbikes, curses, a catch-all nostalgia for the 70s-90s, galoshes, wind and, horrifyingly, the collected works of the Waterboys. But mainly an ancient, unknowable evil (and plaid).

Here’s twitchy young roustabout Wade Penney (Charlie Heaton) with some combatively accented exposition. “I tells ye, these waters can be deadly,” he splutters, waggling his fish slice seawards as he prepares breakfast for his credulous Airbnb guests. “It’s been one seafarin’ tragedy after another for us.” Wade is an idiot but he is not, in this instance, wrong. First there was the seafarin’ tragedy of 1986, a splosh-based catastrophe that saw his family’s cottage – and his disconcertingly muscular grand pappy – dragged underwater by forces unknown. Then there were the fishing bans, the decades of economic uncertainty and the resettlement programme – a looming government-led scheme that threatens the town’s remaining hopes for survival. And now? “Jumpin’ Jesus,” blurts ripped paterfamilias Calvin Penney (Josh Hartnett). “Will ye look at dat!” We look at dat. It’s an iceberg. A towering wodge of inexplicable CGI menace has materialised in the harbour, bringin’ with it yet more trouble for the embattled sea hunks.

But this is no ordinary trouble. And this is no ordinary iceberg. Indeed, this particular “floater” stinks “of ammonia” and soon trawlermen are vanishing, bloodied body parts are bobbing ashore and something vast and vengeful is glowering up at them all from the depths of the bay. As tiny-eyed widower Calvin puts it: “What da frig is goin’ on?” Simple, says doughty Dr Fonda Howander from the Ocean Science Centre down in Seal Cove. “It’s not an iceberg.” It is, in fact, “one big frozen mucous membrane!” Calvin’s brow concertinas. Mucous? Deep within his ruggedly masculine skull, a long dormant synaptic connection flickers to life. “You mean,” he gulps, “like … snot?”

Fonda (Mackenzie Davis) smiles and nods pityingly. These beefy simpletons and their innocent ways! If only nature was as sympathetic as she is. Alas, nature – in the form of a massive squid unleashed via the thawing of ancient Arctic permafrost and subsequently driven to a) rubbing itself over icebergs in a desperate act of territory marking, and b) killing everyone – is a bastard. Or is it? Could the cephalopod’s ire be justified? Its very existence be a heartrendin’ metaphor for climate breakdown and the passivity of humankind? Possibly. But then, it’s hard to tell. The eco theme is so far down in the mix as to be virtually inaudible. There are fleeting references to warming oceans and “systems breaking apart” but these are curiously apologetic things; faint and barely decipherable prophecies of doom burbling under the neon blare of revvin’ motorbikes and references to Jaws. 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.