Newfoundland’s fishing waters have developed a very large problem. Netflix has released the first teaser trailer for Below, a six-episode creature thriller that traps Josh Hartnett between a frightened coastal community and an unseen threat beneath the waves. Watch the teaser above and read on for what to know.
Something Is Moving Beneath the Boat
Hartnett plays Calvin Penney, a stubborn Newfoundland fisherman whose working day takes a terrifying turn when a huge mass begins cutting through the water towards his boat.
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Netflix is not handing over a convenient creature close-up just yet. Instead, the teaser sells the threat through scale and reaction: a violent wake, terrified faces fixed on the sea and Calvin eventually screaming, “Stay back from the water!”
The trouble does not remain offshore for long. Strange events begin tearing through Calvin’s village, locals descend into mayhem and his son Wade starts displaying frightening symptoms of his own. Whatever is beneath the surface is already reaching well beyond it.
Calvin Has More Than a Monster to Worry About
Calvin is already carrying plenty before an unidentified sea creature arrives to terrorise his hometown. He is a single father of three, haunted by the mysterious death of his own father decades earlier and struggling to preserve a fishing livelihood that is slowly disappearing.
His eldest son, Wade, played by Stranger Things star Charlie Heaton, is the only one of Calvin’s children who has not left for the mainland. The two are close, although Calvin’s fear of losing another family member has made him suffocatingly protective. Wade’s frightening new symptoms are unlikely to improve matters.
Calvin eventually joins forces with visiting marine biologist Fonda Howander, played by Mackenzie Davis (Station Eleven, Speak No Evil). Together, they investigate the creature and the island’s buried history. Apparently, finding the thing and pointing a harpoon at it will not be enough.
Hartnett said creator Jesse McKeown’s scripts immediately pulled him in.
“I read the first two scripts so quickly, in less than an hour,” Hartnett told Netflix’s Tudum. “The voice was so clear, the concept was so engaging, and the character was fantastic. I’d never read anything like it before.”
An Old-School Creature Feature With Room to Breathe
McKeown, whose credits include The Umbrella Academy, created Below with the handcrafted genre films of Steven Spielberg and John Carpenter in mind. Newfoundland’s legends, history and unforgiving landscape also fed into the story.
Stretching the creature-feature setup across six episodes allows the series to expand its setting and characters rather than simply lining up residents to become seafood.
“With six episodes, you can take your time and tell a bigger story with more characters and more unexpected detours,” McKeown told Entertainment Weekly. “You can build a whole community. It’s not just a straight man versus beast thing.”
Netflix’s current press materials also specify that the story is not supernatural. Whatever is causing the chaos is apparently flesh and blood, so it remains to be seen what kind of creature we’re in for.
Newfoundland Is Playing Itself
Below was filmed on location in Newfoundland, with the production taking its cast onto the actual ocean rather than keeping everyone safely inside a green-screen tank.
Heaton worked alongside the Coast Guard, drove boats and kayaked on open water. Hartnett prepared for Calvin’s regional accent by listening daily to a local radio station where fishermen discussed their trade, while Heaton spent time in bars outside St. John’s absorbing the local culture.
“It’s such a unique landscape and so rugged, dangerous, isolated, and scary in a lot of ways,” McKeown told Tudum. “But then there’s also this other side to it — the community is so warm, and the people are so funny, and there are many eccentricities about the place.”
Who Else Is in the Below Cast?
Alongside Hartnett, Davis and Heaton, the cast includes Willow Kean, Ruby Stokes, Kaleb Horn, Rohan Campbell, Natasha Henstridge and Mary Walsh.
McKeown serves as creator, showrunner and executive producer. Jessica Rhoades executive produces through Pacesetter alongside Chris Hatcher, Hartnett, Jamie Childs, Louise Sutton and Sharon Hall.
When Is Below Released?
The creature can remain submerged for now. All six episodes of Below surface on Netflix on October 8, 2026.
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