phancy.com - horror reviews - MOH 2020

Sea Fever



IMDb Info

Release Year: 2019
Runtime: 1h 35min
Country: Ireland, UK, Sweden, Belgium
Language: English
Genre Tags: Drama, Horror, Mystery
Plot Summary: The crew of a West of Ireland trawler, marooned at sea, struggle for their lives against a growing parasite in their water supply.

Poster - Title Card


phancy.com rating:

phancy.com notes: Crew trapped on a fishing boat are attacked by a sea monster that brings infection. Accidentally the most relevant movie of 2020. Slowly-paced, without jumpy scares. It could easily have been juiced up to be more tense, but I wound up liking the quietness of it all. It felt more natural, and scary on a more philosphical level.


Outside Reviews:

Tomris Laffly
2 out of 4 stars - rogerebert.com

In today's rapidly shape-shifting world during the still-early days of the global Covid-19 crisis, there is something disturbing and spine-tingling about a parasitic being, a hostile virus turning the members of a tight-knit group against each other where the means to survival is isolation and sacrifice. But that accidental and vague present-day bearing doesn't quite elevate a lackluster, mostly scare-free story told far more disturbingly (and with more present-day relevance) by John Carpenter's The Thing. You'll leave Hardiman's deck wondering why you aren't more rattled, or even seasick, while hoping for another genre flick from the clearly skilled director soon. Perhaps one that anchors into a deeper story this time.


A.A. Dowd
Grade: B- - Sea Fever is the accidental zeitgeist horror movie of our isolated here and now

Honestly, writer-director Neasa Hardiman, a TV veteran who helmed a couple episodes of Jessica Jones, might have been better off emulating her influences more shamelessly, or at least a bit more emphatically. Beyond her pretty gnarly spin on Alien's famous chest-buster sequence, nothing here rises to comparable levels of intensity, paranoia, or queasiness. Then again, there's also something refreshing about Sea Fever's minimalism - the way it keeps everything in the realm of both plausible behavior and some semblance of "realism." Armed with a presumably limited budget, Hardiman resists tilting the action into full-scale Hollywood bombast; she deploys her effects sparingly, which is a plus, because they're much less convincing than her cast's distressed reaction to them. Likewise, there are few displays of superhuman fortitude: Only Siobhán, in her emotional detachment, approaches anything like steeliness, her shipmates responding instead with credible fear, panic, and tears.