‘Below’ (2026) Netflix Series Review - This Sea Monster Thriller Is Exhausted by Its Own Ideas

Many journalists nowadays rightly complain about being asked to do work that goes beyond their job description or meet unrealistic targets. They are not merely told to investigate, compile, and write a report/article for the newspaper or website. They also have to know SEO, video editing, social media, and Canva, and on top of all this, they must be able to pitch and write ten articles per day along with the daily editorial duties assigned to them by their manager/boss/editor. No wonder many of them experience burnout, and many of them even quit because of the meager salaries. It's very much possible that you might find a corpse or a zombie exuding more vigor than these exhausted, multitasking journalists. If Below, created by Jesse McKeown, had been a person working in a newsroom, it, too, would have looked like one of these tired journalists. Poor creature, after all, is expected to be a monster thriller, a love story, a family drama, a drama about sibling jealousy, a sci-fi mystery, a cultish horror show, and a story about a corrupt and greedy industrialist.

As you might have guessed by now, Below is extremely busy. So busy that it naturally feels exhausted, as if juggling these various plot threads has left it huffing and puffing. That sense of tiredness comes through in its lustreless tone as well as its mechanical momentum, which dutifully and unexcitingly jumps between one thing and another. McKeown's strategy is all too familiar in this era of disposable offerings from streaming services: throw everything on the wall without bothering to see if anything really sticks, or toss every ingredient into the pot without bothering to see if the dish will turn out tasty. The point is, if Below were a candidate I had to interview for a job, I wouldn't bother asking it about, say, character development because there are no characters in the series, only marionettes that help deliver what's written in the script. Given how haphazard and clumsy Below is, I doubt whether the makers even had something resembling a script before they began shooting. The gears of the, ahem, story change according to this logic: let's keep things "fresh" and "unpredictable" through random twists.

Oh, you think Below is about a sea monster? Ta-da! Here is Wade Penney (Charlie Heaton) experiencing supernatural nightmares. Is he hallucinating? Is he actually seeing ghosts and spirits? Psych! That creepy woman is alive and lives on an island with her family. Hey, Jay (Rohan Campbell) owes $80,000 to...somebody. Is he under a serious threat? Do we need to be worried about him? Oh, look, those two guys are beating him mercilessly. Ha, fooled you again! Why do you think we have a sea monster in this series? Turn one of them into food for the giant squid and hastily make the other a friend of Jay just before killing the former bad guy. Plot convenience, baby. Oh, sorry. Slip of the tongue. Unpredictable storytelling, baby.

Well, there is a difference between being unpredictable and being clumsy. Below not only belongs to the latter category, but its "unpredictability" is more like a matter of throwing dice or drawing chits to decide which plot lane to pick after a certain amount of time.

It also feels as if McKeown and his team constantly told one another that there are no bad ideas, that everyone should feel free to contribute to the story, and then simply gathered all the input and ideas without bothering to filter them or flesh them out properly. Why is Jay sleeping with Jan (Natasha Henstridge)? Why does a spooky-looking woman steal a diamond ring? Nothing worthwhile comes out of any of these things. But wait till you arrive at the final twist. It changes the very nature of the killer squid by converting it into a figure of maternal rage and warmth, only to reach a faux-tragic ending that, given the mechanical, hacky, and impersonal nature of the series, doesn't feel even a teeny-weeny bit tragic.

Perhaps McKeown could have taken a page out of Wade's personality and rendered the series entertainingly weird and ridiculously kooky. There is no shame in being unapologetically bizarre and trashy. If done right and with skill, self-deprecation can also be amusing. McKeown, though, seems lost. He doesn't know what he wants Below to really be. There are moments when it appears as if the show had more muscle on its body, but all of it was ultimately trimmed (or maybe chewed off by that giant squid). Why? Ask McKeown and Netflix. Why did they settle on releasing something listless, indifferent, and vapid? That's possibly a far more interesting mystery than whatever the deal is with these characters and the cephalopod beast. A not-tired, spirited journalist can perhaps investigate this. The others can take rest and go to sleep.

Final Score - [1/10]
Reviewed by - Vikas Yadav
Follow @vikasonorous on Twitter
Publisher at Midgard Times