(2019)
Written and directed by Neasa Hardiman
Starring Hermione Corfield, Jack Hickey, Olwen Fouéré, Dougray Scott,
Connie Nielsen, Ardalan Esmaili, Elie Bouakaze
This was a film that I just took a random chance on while scrolling through Prime, and I’m glad I stopped on it. The bad part about having endless titles to scroll through is if it doesn’t hook you in the first 10 minutes, you move on. We have to make that decision and stick with it. Yeah, sometimes you’re going to lose, but others are well worth the time. Sea Fever was one of those I feel is worth taking the time.
Watching the trailer, it almost makes it sound like the plot is about a fishing boat that runs across some sort of sea monster. And that is sort of the story, but not really. There is some sort of creature, but the story is more about the effects of microbiology that makes the film a little more interesting. And if you watch the trailer, I’m not giving anything away that it doesn’t do.
Hermione Corfield plays a very awkward marine biologist that goes aboard this fishing vessel as some sort of learning trip but has to pull her own weight as well. It’s not that she doesn’t like people, but she seems more at home with numbers and a microscope. The boat is run by Dougray Scott and Connie Nielsen, who have to make this trip worthwhile due to the money situation they are in. This plot device is used a lot in certain sub-genres, such as haunted house movies, where there is no reason for characters not to just walk away, but because they have all of their money tied up there or some other reason like that, they have to stay. Same goes here. Same reason why the captain chooses to go into an area of water that the coast guard has labeled forbidden, because he knows no other boats will be fishing in that area.
The boat gets caught up on something that is holding them in place. They also notice that something seems to be slowly eroding itself through the hull underneath. When Corfield goes in the water to find out, she sees the creature that is holding on to the boat, sort of a giant squid. But that is the least of their problems because the microscopic parasites that have slowly infiltrated the boat and their water supply is ironically, the bigger problem.
As the crew tries to figure out what they are dealing with, and who might be infected, there are a lot of hard questions to be asked and decisions to be made, some that all don’t agree with. There are more than a few gory sequences that will keep gorehounds appeased, and plenty of situations to make germaphobes twitching.
Award winning writer / director Neasa Hardiman gives us so much more than one would expect about a film like this. If you’re expecting something like a giant squid attacking a boat and its crew, then you will be disappointed. Instead, Hardiman gives us a story of a boat filled with real characters, that have and are making decisions for their own personal reasons, even if it isn’t the best for everyone onboard. There also some really incredible underwater photography here, from jellyfish swimming bout, to even something as simple as a shot of the water surface, but from underneath.
On a side note, one of the crew members is played by Olwen Fouéré, who I apparently didn’t become aware of until she appeared in that Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2022) abomination, playing Sally Hardesty. But she’s been in quite a few movies that I’ve seen over the years. Her very first film was the very slow paced 1980 film The Sleep of Death, as well as appearing in Stuart Gordon’s Space Truckers (1996), Panos Cosmatos’ Mandy (2018), and She Will (2021). She always gives a very strong performance, and in Sea Fever, she really is good.
