Created by Jesse McKeown · 2026 · six episodes · Netflix
Snook's Arm is a fictional fishing town on the Newfoundland coast, and Calvin Penney (Josh Hartnett) is one of its stubborn lifers, still turning over his father's unexplained death decades earlier. When something starts terrorising the waters near the town, Calvin has to hold his family and neighbours together, and he ends up working with a visiting marine researcher (Mackenzie Davis) who has her own reasons to be looking under the ice. Charlie Heaton plays Calvin's son, Wade. The story is loosely inspired by a Newfoundland tale, and the series had its world premiere as the opening-night primetime selection at the Toronto International Film Festival before arriving on Netflix.
Critics keep returning to the same thing: the atmosphere. Reviewers compare the early episodes to old sea-monster stories, with a slow build and a town that feels lived in rather than assembled. The cast gets steady credit, Hartnett as the anchor and Heaton as the surprise, and Inverse likes the way the show keeps changing genre, calling it "surprisingly cerebral". There is also a climate and big-money thread running under the monster, which several critics treat as the reason it is more than a creature feature.
Below is a captivating ride blending horror and suspense while centering our very real climate crisis.Aramide Tinubu, Variety
This is where critics split. The warmer reviews are happy to follow the show as it drifts from small-town survival toward something stranger. The cooler ones feel it loses its grip. One reviewer finds the first half the strongest and scariest; another says the back half is more interested in mythology than in scares and that the finale lacks fireworks; a third scores it three out of five, calling the pacing uneven and wishing the ideas went deeper. Hartnett's accent draws jokes from more than one critic. If you want a lean monster story from start to finish, expect some friction.
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All six episodes are on Netflix, released in October 2026. Availability varies by country.
This is a critical reading built from published reviews, the premiere coverage and the show's own materials, not a first-hand viewing. Reviews and coverage drawn on: Rotten Tomatoes first reviews roundup, Inverse, What's on Netflix (TIFF reactions), FOX19, CinemaBlend and Metacritic's October TV preview.