Shows Like Netflix’s ‘Below’ That Deliver the Same Coastal Dread and Small Town Mystery

Netflix debuted the limited series ‘Below’ on October 8, with Josh Hartnett, Mackenzie Davis and Charlie Heaton leading a story set in Newfoundland. Hartnett plays a fisherman named Calvin Penney whose close knit village is terrorized by an unidentified sea creature. The blend of creature horror and community drama has viewers searching for shows like ‘Below’ to watch next.

The best shows like ‘Below’ share its basic ingredients, remote settings, local legend and a community facing something it cannot explain. Some lean into comedy, others into bleak survival, and a few borrow directly from the sea.

‘Widow’s Bay’

Apple TV’s ‘Widow’s Bay’ follows Mayor Tom Loftis, played by Matthew Rhys, as he tries to revive a struggling island town 40 miles off the New England coast. The town is mysteriously cursed and its citizens are superstitious, and Apple says the series blends genuine horror with comedy rooted in character.

Reviews of ‘Below’ have been quick to point out that it arrives in the shadow of ‘Widow’s Bay’. The Hollywood Reporterdescribed ‘Below’ as ‘Widow’s Bay’ with a sea monster in place of a curse. Collider noted that ‘Below’ leaves out the slapstick humor.

‘Midnight Mass’

Mike Flanagan’s miniseries unfolds on Crockett Island, an isolated community whose divisions deepen when a charismatic priest arrives and apparently miraculous events begin. The island is a fishing community, which gives it an obvious kinship with the setting of ‘Below’.

Rolling Stone pointed to the series’ debt to Stephen King, from its isolated small town to a stranger offering a dubious kind of salvation. The same review argued that the second half made it one of the most frightening programs on television.

‘From’

Harold Perrineau stars as Boyd Stevens, the sheriff of a small town that traps everyone who enters, while deadly creatures emerge from the forest at night. The Week named ‘From’ alongside ‘Widow’s Bay’ and ‘Midnight Mass’ as the kind of closed setting horror that ‘Below’ sits beside.

Perrineau told Inverse that the series is really a character study about people trapped in a tiny town and hunted. MGM+ renewed it for a fourth season after it became the network’s most viewed series.

‘The Terror’

‘The Terror’ follows Royal Navy crews searching for the Northwest Passage who end up stranded in pack ice, facing starvation, freezing storms and a creature that stalks them. IFORHER calls it a strong match for ‘Below’ because of its suffocating isolation and lurking presence.

Tom’s Guide once called the AMC series one of the best and most underrated shows of 2018 and a far scarier option than ‘Stranger Things’. It trades the Newfoundland coast for the Arctic, but the feeling of a crew hunted far from help carries over.

‘Castle Rock’

Hulu describes ‘Castle Rock’ as a psychological horror series set in the Stephen King multiverse, played out on a few square miles of Maine woodland. It is an anthology show with different story lines and casts each season.

Woman and Home grouped ‘Below’ with ‘Castle Rock’ and ‘Twin Peaks’ as series that weave folklore into the history of a town. The first season follows death row attorney Henry Deaver, who returns to his strange hometown after a request from an enigmatic inmate.

‘Siren’

Legend says the coastal town of Bristol Cove was once home to mermaids, and a mysterious girl named Ryn arrives to suggest the stories are true. Freeform framed the series as a vicious battle between man and sea as predatory beings return to reclaim the ocean.

Eline Powell, who plays Ryn, told Den of Geek that the mermaids here are far more animalistic than the glossy versions in popular culture. IFORHER includes ‘Siren’ among its picks because the seaside atmosphere amplifies the danger creeping onto the shore.

‘The Rig’

‘The Rig’ is a supernatural thriller created by David Macpherson for Amazon Prime Video in which a Scottish oil rig in the North Sea is enveloped in an unnatural fog that cuts the crew off from outside communications. It keeps the focus on a group of workers with nowhere to run.

Iain Glen, who plays installation manager Magnus, said the story is about the planet fighting back. The series premiered in January 2023 and was renewed for a second season.

‘Katla’

‘Katla’ was Netflix’s first Icelandic original series, created by Baltasar Kormákur and Sigurjón Kjartansson. It begins one year after the eruption of a subglacial volcano disturbs the small town of Vik.

Arts Fuse noted that a figure covered in mud and ash emerges from the glacier and staggers toward the village. The same review described a story of trauma and small town provincialism that also draws in folklore and the supernatural.

‘Twin Peaks’

‘Twin Peaks’ was created by Mark Frost and David Lynch and follows the murder of homecoming queen Laura Palmer in the fictional town of Twin Peaks, Washington. It aired on ABC from April 8, 1990, to June 10, 1991.

As the search for the killer continued, the writers played with genre, surrealism and ever stranger events. Screen Rant described ‘Below’ as part Stephen King and part David Lynch, which makes this a fitting place to trace its roots.

‘Stranger Things’

‘Stranger Things’ is a Netflix series created by the Duffer Brothers and set in the fictional town of Hawkins during the 1980s. Screen Rant suggested that fans looking for a replacement will find some solace in ‘Below’.

The link is also personal, since Charlie Heaton, a ‘Stranger Things’ alum, plays Calvin’s son Wade Penney. Readers who have finished ‘Below’ can tell us in the comments whether its Newfoundland sea creature feels closer to the cursed island of ‘Widow’s Bay’ or the nightly horrors of ‘From’.