Tova Sullivan cleans a small-town aquarium at night. Her husband and son have died, and she finds it easier to talk to Marcellus, a giant Pacific octopus, than to tell her friends how lonely she feels. Then Cameron arrives in town looking for his father. He needs money to repair his van, so he takes a job at the aquarium.
That is the setup for Remarkably Bright Creatures, Olivia Newman’s English-language Netflix drama based on Shelby Van Pelt’s novel. You do not need to have read the book. The film explains how these strangers meet and why they need help. Sally Field plays Tova, Lewis Pullman plays Cameron, and Alfred Molina supplies the thoughts we hear from Marcellus. Their friendship is a better reason to watch than the family mystery.
Tova has people around her, but struggles to ask for help
Tova is not completely alone. She has friends and a job she takes seriously. But having someone to chat with is different from admitting that she is struggling. At the aquarium, she can talk to Marcellus without having to explain herself to another person. Field makes those conversations with an octopus believable. Tova treats him as company, not as a pet put there to make the audience laugh.
The harder scenes come when Tova talks about her son and considers leaving the home where her family lived. Moving house means giving up a place full of memories, not just packing boxes. Field makes it clear why a decision about where to live is so difficult for her.
Cameron is harder to like at first. Tova cares about doing the aquarium job properly; he mainly needs the money. Their arguments give them something to work through before they become close. The friendship improves as Cameron starts listening to Tova. Pullman is more interesting beside Field than when Cameron is pursuing his own romance. When Tova tells him about her son, the scene has a clear reason to matter: she is finally trusting someone with something she usually keeps to herself.
Marcellus is funny, but explains too much
Marcellus does not hold spoken conversations with the humans. We hear his thoughts through Molina’s narration while Tova and Cameron have to work out what he wants. He watches them from his tank, leaves it on his own adventures, and notices things they miss. Molina makes his impatience with people funny. The octopus sounds annoyed by how slowly the humans understand what is happening around them.
Marcellus also misses the sea. That gives him something to want for himself, instead of making him only an animal who helps the human characters. The trouble is that his narration sometimes explains feelings the actors have already shown us. After watching Tova struggle to let someone help her, we do not need another explanation of why she is unhappy. More of those moments could have been left to Field.
The romance and mystery need more time
There are two potential couples: Tova and Ethan, the local shopkeeper played by Colm Meaney, and Cameron and Avery, who runs a paddle-boarding shop. Ethan’s steady interest in Tova is easy to understand. He already knows her and looks out for her. Cameron and Avery have less time together on screen. Their relationship moves ahead before we have seen enough of them getting to know each other. It is less convincing than the friendship at the aquarium.
Cameron’s search for his father supplies the mystery, but the film makes its direction fairly easy to guess. Figuring out the family connection early takes some of the surprise out of the ending. There is still a reason to stay: seeing how Tova and Cameron respond matters more than learning something we never expected. But the film wants to answer their family questions and give them new relationships by the finish. There is too little time to make all of those changes believable.
Pixel Twelve verdict
Pixel Twelve score: 7/10 — Good. Field’s performance, Molina’s humor and the friendship between Tova and Cameron make this worth watching. We give those relationships more weight than the surprise of the final reveal: the scenes where Tova talks about her family still matter even when the mystery is easy to solve. The short romances, extra explanations and convenient ending keep the score from going higher.
Watch it if you want a gentle drama about people learning to accept help, with some sadness and an opinionated octopus. If you mainly want a mystery that keeps you guessing, this is not the best choice. It is streaming on Netflix in the United States, with English original audio. The US classification is PG-13, and the Netflix listing runs 1 hour 54 minutes.
More images from Remarkably Bright Creatures
2 screenshotsImages: Netflix. Cast and picnic-table photography: Diyah Pera / Netflix.
See the film page for the cast, trailer and streaming details, or read more Pixel Twelve reviews.
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