‘Below’ Review: Josh Hartnett’s Silly Netflix Creature-Feature Is a Treat for the Eyes and Ears and Not Much Else

The key to a great accent isn’t accuracy. It isn’t even verisimilitude, which is what people tend to mean when they denigrate “bad” accents from places they’ve never been. No, when it comes to accents adopted by actors, what really counts is beauty. Conviction helps, if only because it tends to keep speakers consistent, and consistency keeps audiences enveloped in the story, rather than distracted by its performance. (Perhaps that’s why I’m a sucker for Tom Cruise’s various vocal inflections — whether he’s an exasperated Irish brawler in “Far and Away” or a cartoon oil tycoon in “Digger,” the man commits 110 percent to everything he does, accents very much included.) But my favorite accent work, the ones I quote with close friends and listen to on YouTube when I should be writing this review, tend to be ones that sound good. Meaning, they’re pleasing to the senses — memorable, yes, but also befitting the characters they give voice to. They’re dirty enough to leave grime in your ears, like when Ben Affleck goes full Boston, or so haughty you can’t resist tilting your nose up, like our favorite socialites on “The Gilded Age.” They can be as pure and honest as Kyle Chandler’s Texas drawl in “Friday Night Lights,” or as convoluted and inappropriate as Brad Pitt adopting Jamaican Patois in “Meet Joe Black.” (The man sells it, I’m sorry.) They are entertaining, not at the expense of the larger story, but in addition to it. And that’s where I land with “Below,” a Newfoundland-set (and shot) Netflix series in which Minnesota native Josh Hartnett embraces the odd Os and mysterious Hs of his neighbors to the North(east) while tangling with a giant squid. Creator Jesse McKeown’s limited series (which allows room to expand into an ongoing series, as needed) aspires to be little more than entertainment. Sure, there’s an environmental conscience and small-town spirit, but at the end of the day, the value rests in watching man vs. beast — and it helps that these men (and women) all sound like deranged mounties. Hartnett stars as Calvin Penny, a fisherman still haunted by his father’s death 40 years ago. At the time of the accident, Calvin’s dad was guiding the family house down the river by boat. It was part of the Newfoundland Resettlement Program (inspired by history), which paid to relocate families from remote fishing villages to larger towns because the government claimed the communities were “too costly to sustain” on their own. Calvin’s family’s attempt ends in disaster: The house sinks, their dad drowns, and Calvin is haunted by an eye the size of a truck’s hubcap he sees floating in the water just before catastrophe strikes. Flash-forward to today, and little has changed. Now Calvin is the burly family fisherman, puttering away on his boat, scooping up chunks of ice from nearby glaciers to sell to vodka distilleries. The government once again wants to relocate the households of Snook’s Arm to a bigger city, and the people don’t want to go — well, the majority don’t, anyway. Some greedy ne’er-do-wells are eager to cash in on the province’s payout, but Calvin and his family see the offer for what it is: disrespect. But everything changes when people start dying. Calvin’s eager-to-please son, Wade (Charlie Heaton), watches his captain fall prey to unnaturally turning tides. A few tourists never return home after camping close to the river. A whole moose is dragged out of the water, half-digested… but what could be big enough to eat a moose whole? Fonda Howander (Mackenzie Davis), a marine research scientist who works at a nearby facility, does her best to answer these questions, but their answer soon makes itself frighteningly apparent: It’s a squid! A big one! And she’s angry! Mackenzie Davis in ‘Below’Courtesy of Jan Thijs / Netflix “Below” tacks on a few time-sucking plot devices to stretch the nearly four-hour story into 35-minute episodes, including toxins in the ice that infect people with an unquenchable thirst, weird scars, and annoying hallucinations, as well as barely developed melodrama among Calvin’s extended family, who picked the wrong Come Home Year to… come home. (His daughter brings her boyfriend to meet the family! His youngest son is in debt to some bad dudes! His sister might take the government buy out and move away!) It all works well enough, but it also plainly doesn’t matter. Some of the aforementioned extras are explained away with a line or two, while others are dropped before they ever get anywhere. But the real issue plaguing “Below” is simpler: There’s not enough of the squid. Not quite a horror show (there’s tension and a bit of gore, but nothing scary) and barely an action-adventure, McKeown’s series either didn’t have the budget to invest in an adequate amount of tentacled terror or didn’t want to indulge viewers’ inherent fears of whatever’s floating in the ocean deep. Like too many American Netflix originals, this Netflix Canada production is all set up and little pay-off. After whetting our appetite for a creepy creature feature, it retreats into safer, heartwarming confines. You can almost hear the sad trombone in Mark Korven’s eerie score (womp womp), but at least “Below” offers consistent, immediate rewards as it slowly lets us down: I’m speaking, of course, about those accents. Hartnett hits d’ose hard Ds with zeal, making every singular verb plural while wearing the hell out of his fisherman’s hats. Davis curls her Os with an angelic lilt in a finely calibrated contrast to Fonda’s fearsome intellect (and ethics). Heaton, freed from the boring confines of “Stranger Things” (and inspired by a guest arc on “Industry”?) leans all the way into Wade’s talking-dog spirit, diligently chewing his dialogue like a Labrador gnawing on a tennis ball. Paired with gorgeous scenery (only slightly dampened by a few questionable VFX inserts), “Below” is a good enough time if you go in with low expectations and an open mind. The splendid supplements may outweigh the overall package, but who’s to say d’hey aren’t enough entertainment on their oon? Grade: C+ “Below” is available now on Netflix.