After a mostly quiet past year and a half, Josh Hartnett is about to resurface on-screen in a big way this fall. Last seen in M. Night Shyamalan‘s horror thriller Trap and the action-comedy Fight or Flight, he’s locked in for the latest of many high-profile Colleen Hoover adaptations, Verity, on October 2. It’s poised to be the darkest film based on the author’s work to date, pairing Hartnett with Anne Hathaway and Dakota Johnson in an erotic psychological thriller love triangle package that’s a far cry from the romance of It Ends With Us and Regretting You. Shortly after that return to theaters, however, the actor is bound for the waters of Newfoundland for a haunting new Netflix mystery series.
Below puts Hartnett in the shoes and beanie of a “big-hearted but stubborn” fisherman named Calvin Penney, who is living a quiet life in a small Newfoundland town while still grappling with the tragic and mysterious death of his father decades prior. Part suspense-filled thriller and part family drama, the series follows Calvin as he tries to protect his family and his community when an unknown sea creature surfaces near the town to terrify its residents. His only hope is a visiting marine biologist, whom he joins to learn more about the animal and the island’s dark secrets to prevent further tragedy. With just over one month until release, Netflix has unveiled an official trailer that shows the extent of the damage this threat is capable of.
The footage opens with a showcase of the familial atmosphere within Calvin’s town. He can’t imagine living anywhere else, between the idyllic setting, the tight-knit community, and the happiness of his wife and kids. When an unusual presence is picked up in the water, however, the cozy feeling is replaced by an oppressive, haunting air hanging over them all. Whatever is in the water pays not just a physical toll on the people, but a psychological one as it rips exposed houses down into the depths and makes even touching the sea seem like a death sentence. Like Martin Brody in Jaws, Calvin struggles to make everyone aware of the danger and keep them out of the water, but with his own son, played by Stranger Things alum Charlie Heaton, seemingly drawn to it in one haunting moment, it’ll be no small task for him to protect even his own loved ones.
Who Else Is Involved in ‘Below’?
For Heaton, the chilling new thriller is just one of two high-profile reunions with Netflix he has in store. He’s next set to play one of the two heirs to the Shelby name in the new Peaky Blinders sequel series following the events of The Immortal Man, joining Jamie Bell‘s Duke Shelby. Mackenzie Davis also joins him and Hartnett in Below, alongside Ruby Stokes, Kaleb Horn, Rohan Campbell, and Willow Kean. The Umbrella Academy writer Jesse McKeown created the six-episode limited series and serves as showrunner, with Hartnett also an executive producer alongside Jessica Rhoades, Chris Hatcher, Jamie Childs, Louise Sutton, and Sharon Hall. Setting the series in Newfoundland was a personal touch that McKeown told Tudum was born out of love for the land and the truly unique and eerie mix of warmth and ruggedness that defines it.
“I’ve been coming to Newfoundland for many years, and it’s become a part of my life. I just always felt like I wanted to set something here, that this would be a great place for something big and something kind of epic. It’s such a unique landscape and such a rugged, dangerous, isolated, scary place in a lot of ways. But then there’s also this other side to it, which is that the community is so warm and the people are so funny and unique and there are so many eccentricities about the place.”
Below arrives on Netflix on October 8. Check out the trailer in the player above.
via Collider