Mini-series - 6 episodes
Watch the trailer
Created by: Jesse McKeown
Starring: Josh Hartnett, Mackenzie Davis, Charlie Heaton, Ruby Stokes, Kaleb Horn, Rohan Campbell, Willow Kean
Rated: TV-MA
Plot
When a mysterious sea creature terrorizes a remote town, a fisherman must fight to protect his family, his community, and his way of life.
Verdict
It's a giant squid. That's all this series has. It doesn't develop these characters, and there isn't much tension. Initially we wonder what's attacking the village, then it's a question of why. Eventually the question is what to do about it, but this throws in a few wrinkles so that the solution isn't so easy. The fifth episode loses focus while also padding the episode count. The series is an idea that has potential, but the series never taps into it. Nothing stands out other than the giant squid.
Skip it.
Review
A remote fishing village encounters a strange sea creature. It's a neat idea, and the result is largely what you'd expect.
The introductory scene is a family moving their house across the waterway via a barge. The house gets caught on something and sinks to the family's horror. It was part of a relocation program, and the people of the village are being pushed to relocate again forty years later. This is a fishing town that's struggling. Now an adult, Calvin (Josh Hartnett) watched his house sink as a child, but he's still fishing and trying to make ends meet. He finds a strange glacier fragment that he can't sell due to the amount of impurities. The local marine biologist Dr. Howander (Mackenzie Davis) determines it to be more than ten thousand years old. It's not a glacier but some kind of secretion. By the end of the first episode, we know there's a creature in the water and it looks like a giant squid.
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| E2: Josh Hartnett plays Calvin Penney |
In the second episode the squid attacks a boat, resulting in Calvin's son Wade (Charlie Heaton) exhibiting strange reactions such as rashes, extreme thirst, and hallucinations. Calvin warns the town to stay away from the water. In the next episode he goes out on the water, to get Wade back who has gone out on yet another boat. A conservationist realizes Wade has a connection to the squid, and they're leveraging that. Their intentions are unclear at that point. They force Calvin into their submersible, though I don't know why. They want to chase the squid. Calvin's there to set up the climax and provide stakes when the squid attacks the submersible.
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| E6: Mackenzie Davis plays Dr. Fonda Howander |
Calvin ends up on the other side of the waterway. How he survived the submersible incident is nothing short of movie magic. He finds a family that didn't relocate. No one noticed, and they've been fishing all this time, aided by the squid. I'd like this more if this episode had been excised. It also sets up a sinister reason behind this and the past relocation. It seems like filler.
In the final episode the military is evacuating the town so they can attack the squid, but it's also revealed why the squid is in the town and so aggressive. Now that Calvin and his family knows the squid's motivations, they subvert the evacuation to help the squid and prevent the military from killing it.
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| E5: Charlie Heaton plays Wade Penney |
It's a serviceable yet not unique idea. I expected it to do more with the town and it's sickness. That could have been incredibly intense, instead this introduces another family that no one realized stayed behind forty years ago while also bringing in a developer into the story. It's unnecessary. The focus should be the danger this creature presents. Having the squid cause more destruction could have pushed the town to decide whether leaving actually is a good idea, creating tension in the town. Instead this keeps introducing outside forces. I like what this could be, but the end result lacks the impact this should have had.
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