Sea Fever: Movie Review
Happy Wednesday, everyone! I’ve been determined to make this week really productive and so far, so good! I’ve gotten out of a small writing slump and have also been trying to be more mindful, aka some yoga and no caffeine after 2pm, to hopefully alleviate my insomnia a bit.
I watched Sea Fever just this past weekend, after seeing a post about it on Reddit. Currently I could only find it for rent on Amazon. Since it is a recent release (it came out just this year), there will be no spoilers in this review above the spoiler line.
The Movie
Sea Fever is a 2019 science fiction horror thriller film. It was written and directed by Neasa Hardiman and stars Hermione Corfield, Dougray Scott, and Connie Nielsen. The movie premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in September 2019 and then released for VOD in the US and UK in April of 2020.
The film is about a scientist joining the close-knit crew of a fishing trawler in Ireland. The movie begins with some bad news as the crew finds out they can’t hit up a ripe fishing zone since a pod of whales have appeared there and the Coast Guard has deemed it an “exclusion zone”. The owners of the ship, a married couple, are strapped for cash so the husband decides to sail through the exclusion zone anyway and, boy, do they regret it.
A giant entity pings on their radar and then all hell breaks loose. The film at that point rings close to themes seen in The Thing but being that we’re all in a world haunted by COVID, the movie’s horror flavour also all hits pretty close to home.
Review
When I heard the premise for the movie, I got pretty excited for it, which is why I went ahead and rented it from Amazon. Sea Fever is a mix of science fiction and contagion horror, set out in the open water with a hideous monster beneath the waves. What's not to love?
I enjoyed the premise, the acting, the general feel of the movie, but I wouldn’t say it blew me out of the water (bah-dum-TSH). The movie itself follows a pretty standard formula and, while it is a great and fun movie, it’s not unique.
Another downside is that, while the movie was suspenseful for the majority of it, it wasn’t very frightening. And the ending did let me down a bit.
I call out another specific point below the spoiler line further down the post, so you can check that out if you want.
Would I recommend it? I suppose so, just because, despite its downsides, it was still an enjoyable watch.
Score: 6/10
x P.L. McMillan
SPOILER LINE
So one thing that really bothered me – this may be because I’ve been spoiled by movies like Underwater and the various Cloverfield movies – is that I like seeing the big monster, the kaiju, the behemoth. I like the thrill of the review and the subsequent chaos.
Sea Fever reveals its monster relatively early on and then it’s gone. Heartbreaking. After that, it becomes more of a movie about a sea-based parasite. Again, still a good movie, but I was a bit disappointing that I didn’t get to see more of the sea creature.