Netflix’s Below Arrives October 8 — Josh Hartnett vs. the Deep

The fish are gone. The icebergs are coming closer. And something under the water has started noticing the town. Below, Netflix’s new six-episode creature thriller, hits the streamer tomorrow — October 8, all episodes at once — and it is arriving with the one thing October television needs most: a real monster, in real fog, in a place that feels like nowhere you’ve seen before.

LOS ANGELES — Here is what Below is: a Newfoundland coastal town called Snook’s Arm, a hard-bitten fisherman named Calvin Penney, and a sea creature that turns a political conflict over a depleting fish supply into a fight for survival. Here is what Below is not: a show shot on a backlot. The series was filmed entirely on location in Newfoundland — St. John’s and coastal sites including Conception Harbour, Brigus South, and Bacon Cove — between June and October 2025, and everyone involved insists the place is the point.

Josh Hartnett stars as Calvin Penney, a big-hearted but stubborn fisherman still haunted by his father’s death decades earlier. The fish have run out, so Calvin has taken to harvesting ice from icebergs to make a living — a detail that roots the show’s horror in something uncomfortably real. Mackenzie Davis plays Fonda Howander, a visiting marine researcher who teams up with Calvin to figure out what is happening in the water. Charlie Heaton, known to Netflix audiences from Stranger Things, plays Calvin’s son Wade. The ensemble also includes Natasha Henstridge as Jan, Joshua Close as Officer Jaxon Noseworthy, Rohan Campbell as Jay Penney, Willow Kean as Ruth Penney, Ruby Stokes as Mary Penney, Kaleb Horn as Noah, and Newfoundland icon Mary Walsh as Linda.

The production went to genuine lengths to earn its atmosphere. Practical effects did the heavy lifting: crews pumped artificial fog across the bays, and a full-size prop house was submerged for a month to get the right decayed look. Hartnett spent months with a dialect coach on the Newfoundland accent, and local cast members helped the rest of the ensemble nail it. “If I didn’t know how to say something, I would check,” Charlie Heaton told Reuters. “I’d be like, is this OK? Are we doing an OK job? They were so supportive.”

But Below is reaching for more than jump scares. The show blends eerie suspense with heartfelt humor and a direct engagement with climate change — the depleted fishery, the drifting icebergs, the warming water are not set dressing but the engine of the plot. Davis told Reuters that leaving climate change out of a story like this would have been unthinkable, adding that the show balances its themes so it doesn’t feel didactic or punishing to watch. The series also roots itself in regional history: it takes place during Come Home Year, the real-life Newfoundland tradition of expatriates returning home for the summer, and opens with a flashback to the mid-century Resettlement programs, in which isolated communities were paid to move — houses and all — to more populated areas. In Below’s depiction, a family towing their home across the water meets tragedy: a haunting image that creator Jesse McKeown says was the first scene that came to him.

McKeown, whose credits include The Umbrella Academy, The Sinner, and 19-2, wrote the series with a room that includes Karen Walton (Ginger Snaps), Perry Chafe (Republic of Doyle), and Natty Zavitz. Directing duties split three ways: Jamie Childs (The Sandman) helmed three episodes, with Helen Shaver (The Penguin) and Stephen Dunn (Closet Monster) taking the rest. Hartnett executive produces alongside Jessica Rhoades, Chris Hatcher, Louise Sutton, and Sharon Hall. The series had its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival, and early reactions have been warm — WhatsOnNetflix’s early review of the opener found the show had heart and called the mystery set up by the first two episodes compelling, singling out the series as one to keep on the October radar.

The timing is deliberate. October 8 plants Below at the front of Halloween-season viewing, and Netflix is releasing all six episodes at once rather than metering them out weekly — a binge-sized bet on a show the company has been teasing since its first-look announcement in July. The first trailer has already drawn comparisons to Jaws, Stranger Things, and Outer Banks — creature-feature DNA, teen-adjacent ensemble, and sun-bleached coastal mystery. But the Newfoundland of it all is what could set it apart: fog you can feel, accents you can’t fake, and a monster that may turn out to be the most familiar thing in the water.

Rated TV-MA, Below streams globally on Netflix starting tomorrow. For more of the season’s scares, see our Crystal Lake coverage and East of Eden limited series; the week’s biggest releases are in our box office finals.