Six high school seniors, including Kitty (Bonnie Dennison), Johnny (Daniel Zovatto) and Matt (Chris Conroy), head out to a secluded lake, where they are attacked by a large, toothy killer fish.

These obnoxious characters become trapped on their small boat and, as the monstrous fish circles them, their tenuous friendships and loyalties soon dissolve.

Wow… all of the characters in this movie (written by Tony Daniel and Brian D. Smith) are so very, very unlikeable!

Every one of these ‘friends’ is out to save their own skin, so it’s no surprise that I ended up really, really wanting the fish to get all of them!

The best thing about this movie is the use of practical FX, with an actual, decent-sized, toothy model fish used.

It was a joy to watch this scaly critter swimming about.

The director, Larry Fessenden, made the far better film THE LAST WINTER (2006), which was based in the Arctic and was an intriguing and pretty effective slow burn film that featured spectral caribou!

One of the characters in BENEATH has a wrist-mounted GoPro (is that even practical?)… and I was especially pleased when the guy got eaten!

I really enjoyed the first season of this supernatural, semi-historical, horror anthology series.
A fictionalised account of the doomed Franklin expedition, it is well written, well acted, with a well-sustained mood. The initially slow burn tale gets grimmer as the ships remain trapped in the Artic ice, lead poisoning from defective food tins starts to send people mad, characters resort to cannibalism and a murderous bear-creature continuously picks them off.

The cast is wonderful: Jared Harris is especially good as Captain Francis Crozier, with Tobias Menzies and Paul Ready also standing out in their roles.

The monster, called a Tuunbaq, is a great creation: a huge spirit polar bear-type creature with a weird, semi-human face. There are several really effective monster attack scenes interspersed amongst the excellent, doom-laden drama, including one scene where the beast climbs up into the ship’s rigging in pursuit of its human prey.

Here’s concept designer Neville Page’s visual of the creature’s face…

All in all, THE TERROR is a very satisfying yarn that’s well worth a binge watch.