To say that Below has a Jaws fixation is putting things rather mildly, but while it’s poisoned townsfolk subplot steadily builds, Netflix’s nautical outing finally decides to stop borrowing from the first half of Spielberg’s classic and starts to steal liberally from the second. For anyone who’s sealed in concrete and dropped in the ocean for the past 50 years, once the shark from that seminal movie stopped feasting on random bathers, an ensemble of socially diverse menfolk sailed out at the end of the second act to vanquish the toothy bastard on its own turf and it’s here where Below’s fourth outing garners the bulk of its plot.
To be fair, while watching some canny beast pick off careless campers, slow swimmers, or any other expendable member of the supporting cast has always been fun, it’s the cat and mouse shit later on that usually tends to bring us the best moments. Can Below continue that tradition while throwing in the odd surprise? Let’s go fight a squid, boys!
After catching up with the Sir John Franklin, Calvin is stunned to find that Wade is nowhere to be found on the ship, however fate conspires to keep him on board when the captain and first mate of Steve Bruner’s squid hunting expedition steal his boat to flee back to the mainland. However, their attempt to avoid meeting their death in the beak of a giant squid ultimately proves to be their undoing when the beast in question drags them down to the depths. This means that Bruner is without a skipper and seeing as Calvin is both stranded and has boat experience, he suddenly finds himself reluctantly manning wheel while the squid attacks this bold, intruding vessel.
Meanwhile, back at Snook’s Arm, more and more townsfolk are falling prey to the neurotoxin-laced ice they’ve been putting in their drinks. Delirious and consumed with a furious thirst that has one guy slurping up puddle water in the middle of the road, the unaffected town’s people try to quarantine and restrain the sick in the town hall. But it seems that the sicker you are, the more chance there is that your desperate thirst will have you sprinting to the ocean only to dive in and never return. And if all that seems bad enough, why is local resettlement officer Jan Hicks sabotaging the main radio?
Back on the high seas, Calvin’s discovered that he’s also working with a busted radio, and he finally understands the true scope of Bruner’s mania. After sinking every penny into getting himself and opportunistic marine biologist Dr. Sayed this far, tagging the squid with locator just isn’t enough. Planning to take a trip in a minisub to get eye to eye with this slippery bastard, Bruner and Sayed demand irrefutable footage to make the entire trip worth it, but forced to accompany them at gun point, can Calvin survive getting incredibly close to the watery predator?
By now it’s pretty apparent that Below has no intention to reinvent the barnacle encrusted wheel, but part of the fun of the show has been watching it go through the usual motions. As it stands, despite this third-act showdown occurring an entire two episodes before the end, “The Ocean Will Have Us All” proves to be the best episode yet as it offsets a bit of overly convenient plotting with some cool visuals and a legitimately gripping ending. Maybe we shouldn’t be surprised that this episode does the marauding monster stuff so well, because episode director, Helen Shaver, actually has a fair bit of experience with this sort of thing thanks to playing the female lead in Tremors 2: Aftershocks, and she’s savvy enough to include plenty of classic “oh shit” moments that are the bread and butter of anything that involves humans being stalked by an apex bastard.
Before we delve into that, however, first we really should check in with the good people back on dry land and it’s interesting that the show is continuing to merge a killer animal plot with an infection theme. In fact, there’s a fair bit of striking imagery here, that sees the town police hungrily slurping muddy h²0 from a puddle and Calvin’s sister, Willow staring dreamily at the sea. In the midst of this, Fonda is frantically trying to keep order while Mary cares for her ailing, big city boyfriend and it’s a canny way to hold intrest with the village’s issues while the far more exciting shit is occurring on the waves. However, while the apparent threat of David Wenham’s Bruner is essentially dispensed with in, abrupt, shocking fashion, it’s interesting that the show is now offering up Natasha Henstridge’s Jan as some sort of danger. Is she sabotaging the radio to ensure that more people agree to the resettlement? If she is, it’s a pretty stupid plan, but then if she’s operating out of pure greed, dumber things have been done in past killer animal movies.
But back to the main plot, and you have to think that filming high seas thills like this is probably the whole reason Josh Hartnett signed on in the first place. As part of the classic Jaws trifecta (everyman/scientist/nutjob) he not only gets to look terrified as he points to a sizable wake out to sea, but he gets stuffed into a minisub to go eye to eye with the squiddy fucker – but while most of the episode trades on our familiarity with this sort of thing, there’s still some room for some shock moments. For a start, it’s getting quite amusing that Below keeps raising a bunch of potentially awesome scenarios only to ultimately settle on the most ordinary one. At first, the squid was suggested to be anything from an elder god with mind control powers, to a creature with zombie creating neurotoxin – but ultimately it’s just a giant squid with trippy dribble. Likewise, Wenham’s Bruner came with the potential to be behind some sort of cephalopod-related conspiracy or cult, but again, he’s merely a tapped-for-cash obsessive that just wants a Nope-style clear picture and a Nobel Prize. Jan’s motive will probably be just as average too in the long run, but while “The Ocean Will Have Us All” can’t quite match Jaws for the same level of man vs beast tension, watching the squid buffet them around, only for Sayed to shoot his boss dead when he tries to electrocute it, is genuinely jaw dropping. Similarly, after the squid unscrews the hatch at a dangerous depth and scrunches the minisub, the chances of Calvin surviving are about a good as me walking away unscathed from a paddle in shark infested waters while wearing Lady Gaga’s meat dress. But while matters get fairly far fetched, they still prove to be fiercely entertaining even if they don’t make a lick of logical sense.
With only two episodes to go, Below sticks a massive tentacle in the works, delivers its big showdown early and has the humans come up thrillingly short. But where does the show go from here? How long has Calvin been lost at sea, and what has occured in Snook’s Arm during his absence? Seeing as he’s greeted by three shadowy forms wearing protective clothing, it probably isn’t anything good, but after indulging us with some good old Jaws nostalgia, it looks like it’s finally time for Below to find its own voice.
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Where to watch Below – Season 1, Episode 4: The Ocean Will Have Us All: