In the Sea, No One Can Hear You Scream

The best way to force my hand in watching a movie? Threaten to remove it from streaming! Hence today's feature, which had sat on my Hulu queue for an eternity before falling into the "expiring soon" death list. What better time to dive in? (and yes, considering the aquatic nature of Sea Fever, that pun was intentional.)

Quick Plot: Siobhan is great with research and anomalies but bad with talking to people, making her graduate school program slightly more complicated than she'd like. She reluctantly departs on the Niamh Cinn Óir fishing vessel for some fieldwork, where the tight knit crew immediately bristles at her ominous red hair.

Still, a job's a job, and Captain Freya and husband/skipper Gerard plow on, only for the boat to run afoul of some kind of squid-like creature deep in the "excluded zone". Siobhan is justifiably freaked out, but Gerard smells a big payoff. A messy fishing attempt leads to crew member Jack being injured and the boat's winch breaking, but hey! There's a boat nearby!

And naturally, said boat has its own problems: a busted radio and dead crew, some with their eyeballs gouged out. By the time young Jack is burning with his own fever and ocular woes, it's pretty clear to Siobhan that there's a parasite aboard the boat...and most likely, several of its members' bodies.

Written and directed by Neasa Hardiman, Sea Fever wears its Alien and The Thing-references all over its wetsuit sleeve, and I have no problem with that. Though it has some recognizable faces (Dougray Scott and Connie Nielsen play Gerard and Freya) Sea Fever is clearly a fairly bare bones production, set almost entirely on the claustrophobic boat. It gives us just enough fairly natural conversations between crew members for us to draw a clear enough picture of who has what at stake, so it's easy to care about their fates without exposition overload. Likewise, Siobhan's awkward data-driven nature is perfectly established and gives us a clear compass as the facts unfold, especially as the film dips into just-ahead-of-its-time morality on quarantine responsibility.

There's something extremely efficient about Sea Fever. Its barely 90-minute length wastes no time, but for the most part, we still get everything we need out of the characters and story. Plus, a giant squid! Okay, we don't get MUCH of the squid (if that's what it actually is) but a jellyfish-y sea monster that eventually causes eye explosions? That's pretty darn neat. 

High Points

Without spoiling anything, I was quite satisfied with Sea Fever's ending, which feels appropriate to the story's nature and emotionally right for the characters

Low Points

With so few characters, I would have liked just a little more time to better understand the one with the foggiest fate (Texas Chainsaw Massacre's Olwen Fouere)

Lessons Learned

Fishermen don't swim because they'd rather die fast

College bars are the ideal location to further investigate the possibilities of UV rays

Crazy idea, I know, but hear me out: if you discover a gooey glowing substance eating away at many layers of metal, perhaps the best course of action is not to touch it

Rent/Bury/Buy

I don't know which streamer Sea Fever moved to, but hop onboard if you can. This isn't the find of the year by any measure, but it's solidly made and incredibly clear-headed about the story it wants to tell. Bon voyage.