SEA FEVER (2019)

Studio:      Dust (Gunpowder & Sky)
Director:    Neasa Hardiman
Writer:      Neasa Hardiman
Producer:  Brendan McCarthy, John McDonnell
Stars:     Hermione Corfield, Ardalan Esmaili, Olwen Fouere, Jack Hickey, Elie Bouakaze, Dougray Scott, Connie Nielsen

Review Score:

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Summary:

The crew of an Irish fishing trawler becomes infected with deadly parasites after an unknown organism strands them at sea.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

Compelled by a professor concerned about her introversion, grad student scientist Siobhan joins a fishing expedition aboard the Irish trawler Niamh Cinn Oir to conduct research on aquatic anomalies. Due to an old sailor superstition, skipper Gerard, his wife Freya, engineer Omid, deckhands Johnny and Sudi, and Johnny’s aunt Ciara are distressed to see Siobhan has red hair.

Desperate for a haul that can save their struggling business, Gerard ignores a Coast Guard warning and changes course for an exclusion zone. A massive, unidentifiable squid stops the boat by attaching its bioluminescent tentacles to the hull. Strange blue slime oozes through the wood and gets tracked all over the trawler. Johnny severely wounds his hand while trying to hoist the creature with a winch.

Johnny, Siobhan, and Gerard seek help from a nearby boat. However, they discover everyone aboard dead from seemingly violent suicides, which Gerard attributes to sea fever. When they return, Gerard and his crew discover the creature released the trawler.

Succumbing to his unknowingly infected wound, Johnny begins behaving oddly. Small parasites suddenly burst from Johnny’s eyes and he dies. The parasites fall into a sink and eat their way into the main water supply tank. Sudi becomes similarly infected while taking a shower and later dies.

Siobhan discovers the parasites exist in the blue slime and may have infected anyone with an open cut. The remaining crewmembers try various methods of killing the parasites, but are unsuccessful.

Siobhan warns that the trawler cannot return to shore for fear of spreading the infection to the mainland. Desperate for medical attention, everyone else ignores Siobhan. Siobhan purposefully disables the boat, causing Ciara to punch her.

Ciara attacks Siobhan again after succumbing to infection. Siobhan kicks Ciara off a ladder and the old woman dies.

Realizing he too is infected, Gerard tearfully convinces Freya to kill him with a blade. Distraught following Gerard’s death, Freya leaves by herself in a rowboat.

Siobhan and Omid try heating the water tank to kill the parasites. The creature’s tentacles retreat, but create a hole in the hull that starts sinking the boat.

Siobhan and Omid set the trawler on fire to create a beacon. They then abandon ship in an inflatable raft. Siobhan rescues Omid, who cannot swim, when he briefly falls into the water.

Siobhan realizes she has a wrist wound that became infected. Siobhan sacrifices herself by diving into the water and swimming directly at the creature. Resulting light from the bioluminescent tentacles illuminates the water around the raft. Omid flags down an approaching ship.

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Review:

Siobhan’s grad school professor desperately wants the introverted young scientist to break out of her alienating social shell. To that end, Siobhan ends up coerced into joining a fishing expedition aboard an Irish trawler so she can flex her research skills in the field. Due to an old sailing superstition though, the six-person crew seems a little wary about bringing aboard a woman with red hair.

That wariness appears well-founded when bad luck indeed befalls the boat. Caught on something underwater, Siobhan does a quick dive to take a look at what has the trawler ensnared. She sees an unidentifiable squid whose strange shape and massive size resembles something vaguely Lovecraftian, and its glowing tentacles refuse to let go.

Blue slime starts oozing through wood. Careless boots then track that substance all over each deck. The mystery deepens further when the crew seeks help from another ship only to find everyone aboard dead from apparently violent suicides.

Odd behavior gradually begins changing chemistry among the trawler’s crew. After mote-sized organisms bloodily burst from one person’s eyes, everybody astonishingly discovers they’ve been invaded by a parasitic lifeform. As the infection spreads through their water supply, the crew realizes they’re stranded at sea with a ticking time bomb possibly lodged inside each and every one of them.

Through the slow-burn suspense of its single location story, “Sea Fever” takes a touch of “The Thing” and a bit of “The Abyss” to create coolly claustrophobic chills. Purposefully orchestrated to prop interpersonal drama high above freakshow frights, the movie’s muted tone might be too tame for hardcore genre fans expecting something scarier. That shouldn’t imply the movie is bereft of terrifying trauma however. Anyone who itches at the sight of slithers beneath the skin or inside an eyeball will fully flinch at several shocking shots of bloody body horror.

“Sea Fever” never sets sail to reinvent any wheels regarding the influences it emulates. That’s how the 90-minute film does its minimum wage job as a to-the-point movie worth a one-and-done watch, but also why it won’t be remembered in many mentions or cited on Top Ten lists as time continues rolling by.

To put it both bluntly and succinctly, “Sea Fever” is a standardized thriller made moderately better by a quality cast doing simple, yet solid work. Dougray Scott and Connie Nielsen use their veteran presences to keep fiction tethered to seriousness. Ardalan Esmaili plays a not-much-nonsense engineer with a hint of respectable warmth likening him to Aaron Douglas’ Chief on “Battlestar Galactica.” Siobhan’s comparative coldness owes more to her characterization than Hermione Corfield’s portrayal, which can only be as limitedly appealing as director Neasa Hardiman’s narrowed script permits anyway. None of these personalities light up the screen, but no one acts like they’re in a Syfy monster movie either, which grounds “Sea Fever” in a realistic realm that would be out of place at a drive-in or midnight screening.

Plotting issues don’t dock many points since leaving them lean pares down pacing. The movie has a strange sense of timing, as it initially seems like the boat barely leaves dock before it becomes disabled. We later learn they’re at least 30 hours away from land, although it isn’t entirely clear where nearly two days went. A similar instance occurs when it looks like it’s been minutes since one person died, then someone mentions a timetable that places that death several hours earlier. These are odd head-scratchers in the moment, but better that than slowing down the film’s low-gear speed any further.

With its VOD release in April 2020, “Sea Fever” gets a boost of inadvertent timeliness from the COVID-19 climate of pandemic paranoia and quarantined cabin fever. At a moment when audiences are sheltered at home, the movie’s mood of feeling trapped and untrusting will never be more eerily mirrored in the minds of viewers seeing relatable fears echoed onscreen. It’s a fright film experience best had while it lasts. After the coronavirus dust diminishes and the film’s current event relevance goes with it, “Sea Fever” will have a harder time keeping its head above water in the wider ocean of isolation-based aquatic thrillers.

Review Score: 60

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