OK so Netflix has a new limited series called Below and I watched the whole thing in basically one sitting because it is exactly my flavor of creepy small-town mystery, and Josh Hartnett is doing, in my personal opinion, the best work I've seen from him in years. The full review is over at Times Now if you want their take, but I have feelings and I need to share them.

The setup is delicious. A remote fishing town, a tight-knit community where everybody knows everybody's business, and then something starts pulling people into the water. Not a shark. Not anything with a name, really. And Hartnett plays the local who has to figure out what's happening while also dealing with the fact that the town's secrets go back way further than whatever is currently eating people in the harbor. That's the double hook, right? The monster in the water and the monster in the town's history, and the show slowly reveals they might be the same problem.

What works best is the atmosphere. You know how some shows are dark and you can't see anything and it feels lazy? This is not that. Below is foggy and gray and damp in a way that gets under your skin, like you can smell the low tide through your TV. The sound design does so much heavy lifting too... there's this low, wet rumble whenever the creature is near and my dog lifted her head at it twice. Twice! The dog has never reacted to television before, and that's how you know the sound people earned their paychecks.

Hartnett is the anchor, and I mean that as a compliment. He plays tired and haunted and stubborn all at once, a man who left this town and came back and now remembers exactly why he left. The supporting cast is stacked with those "oh, it's THAT actor" faces who all get real moments instead of just standing around waiting to be monster food. OK, some of them do get monster food'd, but they get to be people first.

The ending. I won't spoil it, because the fun of a show like this is the unraveling, but I will say it commits. It doesn't do the thing where a mystery series hedges at the finish line and shrugs at you. There's a full explanation, it ties the creature and the town's buried history together, and it made me want to immediately rewatch episode one with new eyes. My only knock is that the middle sags a little around episode four, where the secrets-keeping starts to feel like the characters are being dumb on purpose to stretch the runtime. Push through it. The last two episodes are worth it.

Is it scary? For me, it was tense more than terrifying. More "check that the door is locked" than "sleep with the lights on," at least in my living room. If you liked the vibe of a fog-soaked coastal horror story with an actual emotional core, this is your weekend sorted.

I watched it at night, which was a choice, and now every time my fridge makes its little humming noise I'm side-eyeing the kitchen. Would recommend. Watch it before the internet spoils the ending for you, because the ending is the whole point and it deserves to hit you cold.