Siobhan is a young woman who is a PhD student studying deep sea fauna. While she prefers working alone, she’s pushed way out of her own comfort zone when she needs to do some research which requires her to go onboard the fishing trawler Niamh Cinn Óir with a crew of six other people: the Captain, Freya, and her skipper husband Gerard, the ship engineer Omid, with Johnny, Ciara and Sudi being the rest of Siobhan’s company. They set off like just another normal day for the crew, and have a planned destination which is supposed to be rich with fish. A problem arises though: the Irish Coast Guard alerts them and lets them know that their planned destination is within an exclusion zone. Yup, we already know how this story goes: the boat owners are of course nearly sunken in debt so the skipper decides to take them there anyway, as a large amount of fish is needed to keep the boat and jobs floating. And of course he doesn’t tell any of them, including his Captain wife, until they’re at the destination.
Once there, the boat gets tangled into something which makes it impossible for them to move on. Strange breaches are discovered in the hull, from which oozes some kind of slime. Uh-oh. Those definitely aren’t just some innocent barnacles. Since Siobhan has brought with her some diving gear for her research anyway, she’s going down into the ocean to see what’s holding the boat. There, she notice several tentacle-like bio-luminescent organisms attached to the boat, all of them attached to some strange, giant creature. She uses a knife to cut the tentacles from the boat, but that’s just the start of their problems. They also notice an other boat nearby, abandoned and with several bodies inside. Gerard says they must have gotten “sea fever“, and in a way…he’s kind of right…something they soon discover once members of their own crew starts falling ill.
Sea Fever is a science fiction horror thriller from 2019, written and directed by Neasa Hardiman. And in this movie, despite there actually being some kind of giant sea creature, it’s not the monster itself that brings along the biggest threat, but rather what it brings along with it. Being a very low-budget movie with obvious limitations, there wasn’t much focus on the sea monster effects or anything. The little we did see was intriguing enough, and oddly, kind of beautiful…because here’s the thing: this isn’t a movie about the big ‘n bad coming to get people, it’s very much portrayed as just a sea animal doing what’s natural to it. Strange enough, this could’ve been said about most monster movies…everything’s gotta eat, right? But in this movie the creature isn’t really all that monstrous, and isn’t portrayed to make us feel fear just by looking at it. So yeah, while it’s big and has tentacles, this isn’t a horror movie about a Kraken. It’s about the isolation, claustrophobia, fear and paranoia when something deadly starts spreading and they have no ways of escape.
Sea Fever is somewhat limited and slow-paced, but the execution and overall themes makes it interesting enough to stay put. There are even some scenes that are effectively tense and icky. Sure, if you want some fast-paced popcorn-fun B-Horror sea monster movie with tentacles, Deep Rising would more likely be your thing, but if you’d also be in for a sea adventure that’s more of a thriller kind than an outright horror one, you should give this decent low-budget movie a chance!
Writer and director: Neasa Hardiman
Country & year: Ireland/UK, 2019
Actors: Hermione Corfield, Dag Malmberg, Jack Hickey, Olwen Fouéré, Dougray Scott, Connie Nielsen, Ardalan Esmaili, Elie Bouakaze
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2716382/
Nathan Gardener and his family moves to his late father’s farm somewhere in rural New England, in the hopes of living a quiet life and escape the hustle and bustle of the city. Just when they start to settle in, a meteorite crashes into their yard which emits an otherworldly color (a color out of space). One of the children (Jack) is traumatized by the event, and seems to be affected in strange ways. He becomes obsessed with the well in the garden and claims he’s got a “friend” there. Strange flowers and plants starts growing, animals suffer grotesque mutations, and the Gardener family’s life transforms into a colorful nightmare.
In the hopes of being able to bond with her soon-to-be stepchildren, Grace is staying with them in a remote winter cabin over the holidays. Their father was supposed to stay with them, but is unexpectedly called to work and he cannot refuse, which leaves her alone with the children. With the holidays just around the corner she hopes that they will be able to have a good time, but the isolation and a blizzard traps them inside the lodge. Then, mysterious and frightening things start happening, keeping Grace wondering if it’s just the isolation and the strained relationship to the children, or if it’s the demons from her past that have come back to haunt her.
It is Halloween, but Harper isn’t really in the mood for a scary celebration as she is already struggling with a real fright in her life: an abusive boyfriend who keeps sending her angry text messages. However, her friends are determined to have a fun night out and enjoy themselves, so she covers her black eye with make-up and they all head over to a costume party. They meet up with two other guys, and the six of them ends up looking for a haunted house attraction in order to make their Halloween night complete. Very much on random, they encounter the sign for such an attraction on a lonely country road, and decide to check it out. Upon entering this Haunted House attraction, they’re forced to leave their cellphones and have to sign liability waivers (which probably sounds like big red flags right there for our naive protagonists, but in real life there are such attractions that actually requires you to sign liability waivers before entering. Like for example 
On a remote New England Island in the 1890s, two lighthouse keepers have to stay there for four weeks. Thomas Wake, the oldest between the two, has been watching over the lighthouse for a long time and is used to the unfavorable conditions. His new assistant, Ephraim Winslow, does not settle in with ease however. Ephraim is getting more and more frustrated by the older man’s fussing and complaints, where he is being bossed around constantly. When the four weeks are over, and the boat still doesn’t come to pick up Ephraim due to very bad weather, they both realize they might be stuck on the island for far longer than anticipated. Plagued by bad dreams and hallucinations (or are they hallucinations?) Ephraim tries to keep his sanity on the forsaken rock – but this proves to be difficult as deeply sunken secrets are about to break the surface.
Bird Fitcher is a teenage girl who loves old things, and is working a part-time job at an antique store. When a co-worker brings in an old Polaroid camera, she’s really excited, and starts using it, snapping pictures of her friends. She soon realizes that something is not quite right with the camera, as the photos show a shadowy figure looming over the persons on the photo…and very soon it becomes apparent that the photos taken with the Polaroid camera has a very deadly effect.