Sea Fever

 

In its rough outlines, Neasa Hardiman’s film isn’t all that different from any number of unspeakable-menace-at-sea horror flicks, but this chiller — about an Irish fishing trawler that is attacked by disease-baring parasites secreted by a mysterious deep-sea creature — also has a fully realized, lived-in quality: You can smell the oil, sweat, and salt, and hear the grind of motors and murmur of sailors. That enhances both our terror as well as the film’s eerie, unintentional resonance: It will feel uncomfortably familiar to an audience newly obsessed with the anxious mechanics of infection and exposure and quarantine. Still, the movie works not because it was released during a pandemic, but because Hardiman wisely builds suspense from uncertainty, as our heroes are terrorized by the agonizing solitude of the open sea and a nemesis that is practically invisible.