I can’t help it. I see a film is set at sea, I hear mention of ‘creatures’ and my Pavlovian response is ‘Lovecraft!’ God knows, we don’t need every horror story set at sea to feature the Great Old Ones, but it’s a response that’s always lying in wait with me; saying that, some elements of the synopsis for Sea Fever (2019) do call to mind ideas of unnameable, unknowable creatures lurking in the profound darkness of the deep. Well, whilst there is something unnameable and unknowable here, it doesn’t spiral into the kind of madness, nor indeed become the kind of creature feature I assumed it would. If Sea Fever has any one film in its family tree, I’d say it was The Bay (2012), though happily without the ‘found footage’ shooting style. Whilst whatever-it-is seems to be anomalous, it’s people who make the mistakes which throw them into its path. This is a film of human dynamics under extreme circumstances, and your enthusiasm for it will depend on your tastes for that kind of ‘family group in isolation’ drama.
Siobhan (Hermione Corfield) is a driven young scientist who eschews socialising in favour of getting on with her work: she is interested in biological patterns and trends in the marine environment, and along these lines she manages to get herself passage on a fishing vessel in order to study the ecosystem first-hand. She’s a somewhat awkward fit on board the boat, and the superstitious crew are none too pleased to observe that she’s a redhead – it’s bad luck – but they set off as planned. The deal is that skipper Gerard (Dougray Scott) alongside his partner Freya (Connie Nielsen – and before it sends you mad as it did me, she’s Lucilla out of Gladiator) prioritise getting a valuable catch. Siobhan stays out of the way, and does her work around all of that. The first problem with this comes when Gerard chooses to ignore an exclusion zone, cutting through it in pursuit of a lucrative shoal; he doesn’t explain this to the crew, but before long it’s clear the advice was sound and so the vessel gets stuck there.
But what is it stuck…on? They seem to have run into some sort of organism which has mistook them for a whale, according to Siobhan’s best guess anyway. It has attached protuberances onto the hull which are strong enough to infiltrate it; as the crew wonder what to do, a kind of (scientific term) gloop begins to amass inside the ship. A solid catch is still the crew’s priority but Siobhan, now the voice of reason, warns them that this substance could well be harmful. Too late; first Johnny (Jack Hickey) and then Sudi (Elie Bouakaze) become infected with what seems to be a parasitic organism.
As the crew ponder, and grow paranoid, and try to gain help from the nearest, incommunicado vessel, I’ll admit that thoughts next turned to The Thing (1982) and I know it would be mercilessly unfair to judge a film on the fact that it is not, in fact, The Thing, beyond these couple of similarities. This is another issue, separate from the Lovecraftian one; mention ‘strange parasite’ in your synopsis, bring up thoughts of The Thing. Sea Fever has a few moments of body horror, but overall, it is very understated. In fact, it’s frequently rather quiet. It’s a study of enclosed spaces, really, where the threat is larval in every sense of the word. Dynamics between the crew members are – some minor script issues aside – plausible and watchable, but we see but a little here beyond that. There is some intimation of a grander being out there, but it plays only a little part in the narrative style overall. Again, how you feel about that – whether a tad disappointed, or glad of the character-driven alternative – is with you.
If you value a slow-burn horror of enclosed spaces and strange nature, where a large share of the horror derives from the vast, isolating expanses of the sea itself, then there is much to recommend Sea Fever. It looks good, it’s well shot and the performances certainly do the job, with back stories gradually teased out of the narrative as the film goes along. It’s also, thankfully, a sparse ninety minutes – hallelujah, as things would have been unnecessarily diluted by a longer running time. All in all, whilst not the escalating monster epic I’d gotten into my mind, this is a well-wrought film with many merits.
Sea Fever (2019) screened as part of Glasgow FrightFest 2020.