Camestros Felapton

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Review: Silent Sea (Netflix)

The Netflix catalogue of South Korean sci-fi/horror gained extra attention when horror-adjacent thriller Squid Game became a massive hit. I’ve enjoyed several shows, although the two most interesting ones were both quasi-zombie stories (the historical epic Kingdom and the weird monster graphic-novel adaptation Sweet Home).

Silent Sea is a more conventional science-fiction thriller but with some horror elements. In the near future, the world is suffering a severe water shortage but amid the amount crisis, Korea is attempting to launch a mission to investigate a lunar research facility that was abandoned five years earlier. It’s not a spoiler to say these two things are connected as the opening titles sequence hammers home the theme of water.

Biologist Doctor Song Ji-an (Bae Doona Kingdom, Sense-8) is recruited for the mission but has a personal reason for joining: her sister was head of research at the station but died in a mysterious “radiation leak” that led to the base being abandoned. Her sister had tried to contact her in the lead up to the accident and there are unanswered questions about events on the lunar base…

Now fair warning, in the early episodes the near-future setting invites a lot of nit-picking about multiple things. The water shortage is unexplained but appears to be a literal lack of water (i.e. even oceans are becoming depleted). The lunar setting also invites nit-picking about how lower lunar gravity works and much of that is in the first episode. If that’s stuff that will annoy you, then you might need to just go along with it initially. This is mainly a preamble to get a cast of people into a spooky abandoned moon base.

If spooky moon base sounds like a Doctor Who premise…well, yes. There’s a Doctor Whoish vibe about the premise and there’s also a more specific aspect to the story that will remind viewers of a very specific Doctor Who story. It’s a very different plot though, and as more is revealed about the true purpose of the moon base, the story shifts from a horror vibe to more of a thriller as it becomes clear that the team is being manipulated by more than one set of interests.

Entertaining and well worth a watch. I felt like it could have been two episodes shorter as there were parts where revelations were drawn out which were already fairly obvious. The lunar setting was visually excellent and the special effects were both well done and horrific (people die in a very nasty way).

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6 responses to “Review: Silent Sea (Netflix)”

  1. I agree. I havent quite finished it yet, so I appreciate the lack of spoilers 🙂
    Its quite creepy, while not relying on jump scares. They play a lot with lingering cameras, which works, because you expect to be something there (although there usually isnt). Often its quite dark though. And yes, especially at the beginning its clear that the gravity is not the one found on the moon. But I guess that would have been nigh impossible to shoot with this budget.

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    • Yeah…people have worked out how to do NO gravity (or none that matters) but not-much gravity is tricky to depict.

      There’s a bit early on where a character is desperately holding on to avoid falling into a crevasse – and sure that fall would kill you but also it really is going to be a hell of a lot easier to pull yourself up by one hand than it would be normally.

      Also, a lot easier to carry a wounded team-mate than it would be normally – more like carrying luggage

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  2. I remember Moonbase 3, where it was established in the first episode that there was a gizmo that created Earth normal gravity inside the moonbase, leaving the bounding-around-in-slo-mo bits just for the exterior scenes.

    I quite liked Silent Sea, although I did have to stretch my willing suspension of disbelief quite far in some places. (And, yes, I thought of that Who episode too.)

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