Sea Fever

Obviously done on a shoestring budget, this is actually quite an interesting little sci-fi/horror mystery. It all centres around the crew of a stranded trawler who come to realise that there is a malevolent beastie that has found it's way into their water supply after their boat strayed into a restricted area. Luckily "Siobhán" (Hermione Corfield) has some scientific skills and plans a way to stop this lethal parasite from killing (rather messily) not just the people on the boat, but anyone they come into contact to. Rather prudently, it does not try to blow us away with fancy special effects. The use of light on the water and some basic microbe imagery conjures enough just enough sense of menace to keep the plot interesting; as do the efforts from a confident Corfield alongside Dag Malmberg and Olwen Fouéré - and Jack Hickey is quite easy on the eye, too! The script is nobody's finest work, and it is a mite too long - but it delivers well enough within it's limitations and kills 90 minutes on the television fine.

I thoroughly enjoyed this. It's the first thing I've watched recently that didn't feel like they could (and should) shave an hour off of it. A nice, light watch that had a unique concept and a likable cast. I agree with others that the eye popping scene was about as intense as it got, with everyone else dying in fairly lackluster ways. I'm not normally one to say up the gore, but a bit more would have made the second half feel more intense and urgent. I also couldn't help but find it amusingly relevant to the current world "situation" with Siobhán urging everyone to quarantine themselves and think about the greater good over themselves. If she only knew what an impossible task that is.

Ultimately, while it gets a boost of inadvertent timeliness from the COVID-19 climate of pandemic paranoia, face-touching phobia and quarantined cabin fever, 'Sea Fever' is a fairly straightforward, even generic, blue-collar-workers-in-peril thriller. - Jake Watt Read Jake's full article... https://www.maketheswitch.com.au/article/review-sea-fever-paranoia-parasitic-plagues-and-pandemic-horror