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What is Remarkably Bright Creatures about?
A widow who works at a local aquarium finds joy again when she forms unlikely bonds with a giant Pacific octopus and a wayward young man who comes to town in search of family. Together, they uncover a mystery that will lead them to a life-changing discovery and restore their sense of wonder.
Who’s in the cast of Remarkably Bright Creatures?
Two-time Academy Award–winning actor Field (Lincoln, Forrest Gump) will play the widow Tova, with Pullman (Top Gun: Maverick, Lessons in Chemistry) as the new-in-town Cameron. Alfred Molina voices the curmudgeonly octopus, Marcellus. Also in the cast:
- Colm Meaney (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Bring Them Down)
- Joan Chen (Dìdi, The Wedding Banquet)
- Kathy Baker (The Ranch, Edward Scissorhands)
- Beth Grant (Little Miss Sunshine, No Country for Old Men)
- Sofia Black-D’Elia (Single Drunk Female, The Night Of)
Who else is involved in Remarkably Bright Creatures?
Director Newman (Where the Crawdads Sing) co-wrote the script with John Whittington (Sonic the Hedgehog 3). Bryan Unkeless and Peter Craig produce for Night Owl, alongside Anonymous Content’s David Levine. Night Owl’s Alyssa Rodrigues, Anonymous Content’s Tony Lipp, Erika Hampson, Alisa Tager, Newman, and author Van Pelt executive produce.
Remarkably Bright Creatures is now streaming on Netflix.
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I had absolutely no idea this existed until someone sent me a trailer featuring Alfred Molina voicing the internal monologue of an octopus, at which point my immediate and instinctive reaction was obviously “What?” followed almost immediately by “Fine, I’m in.”
Based on the 2022 novel by Shelby Van Pelt, this is unambiguously one of those Sunday afternoon tearjerkers designed for the over 65s crowd, the kind of gentle, warm and unashamedly sentimental drama that a certain generation will absolutely devour and that a different kind of person would dismiss with barely concealed contempt. I am not that person. Remarkably Bright Creatures is a moving, sweet and genuinely charming piece of work that deserved considerably better than being quietly deposited on Netflix with minimal fanfare, because in a crowded cinema full of pensioners unwrapping their homemade sandwiches from tin foil this thing would have raised the roof.
It’s a charming set-up. Tova, a recently widowed elderly woman still quietly devastated by the long-ago disappearance of her teenage son, takes a job cleaning the local aquarium during the night shift where she strikes up an unlikely and gradually deepening connection with Marcellus, the resident giant Pacific octopus, who it turns out has been silently observing the humans around him with considerably more intelligence and emotional investment than anyone has given him credit for. Into this arrangement arrives Cameron, a young and thoroughly directionless man drifting towards the same Pacific Northwest town for reasons that become increasingly connected to Tova’s past as the film progresses.
The mystery of what happened to Tova’s son provides the film’s narrative spine and the relationships built around the aquarium provide its heart, and the film is wise enough to let these two elements develop at their own unhurried pace rather than forcing either into conventional thriller or melodrama territory. It is, essentially, a quiet and gentle story about grief, connection and the unexpected places that healing arrives from, and it tells that story with considerably more craft and intelligence than its Netflix dump-release treatment suggested anyone involved believed it possessed.
Sally Field as Tova is the emotional engine of the entire film and she is unsurprisingly fantastic, delivering what feels like some of her best late-career work in a role that has a very specific balance of optimistic drive and devastating vulnerability. The grief she carries throughout the film is rendered with restraint and specificity, and the moments where that reserve cracks are handled with such precision and understatement that they hit considerably harder than more conventionally signposted emotional beats would have done. Field understands instinctively that the most moving performances are built on what characters don’t say and don’t show, and she deploys that understanding with complete care throughout. Lewis Pullman as the adrift Cameron is a strong foil and the intergenerational dynamic between the two develops with a naturalness and warmth that the film earns rather than simply assumes.
Then there is Marcellus the octopus, voiced by Alfred Molina with a dry, wry authority that is genuinely one of the more delightful pieces of voice casting in recent memory. The conceit of an elderly, curmudgeonly giant Pacific octopus providing sardonic internal commentary on the human drama unfolding around his tank could easily have been unbearably twee or simply distracting, and for the first few minutes I was genuinely concerned it was going to be both. It ended up being neither. Molina brings such a specific and charming personality to the role that Marcellus becomes a genuine character rather than a gimmick, and the CGI rendering of the creature is impressively lifelike, giving him a physical presence and personality that makes the more ambitious sequences involving him feel earned rather than absurd. The octopus works. It really shouldn’t, but it just does.
The Pacific Northwest coastal setting is rendered with a moody and genuinely beautiful atmosphere from Olivia Newman that suits the film’s tone of quiet reflection perfectly, and the ensemble surrounding the two leads, including a reliably excellent Colm Meaney and a warmly drawn small-town community, gives the whole thing a lived-in texture that grounds the more sentimental elements in something approaching real human geography. The balance between humour and genuine emotional weight is handled with more confidence than the premise might suggest, with several genuinely funny sequences, a road trip, an open-mic night, landing without undermining the heavier material surrounding them.
The central emotional revelation, which I will not spoil, is something you will in all likelihood see coming at a considerable distance based purely on the film’s premise and setup. The predictability is real and the film’s tendency towards tidy resolutions and on-the-nose emotional beats is a genuine limitation that keeps it from achieving something truly memorable rather than merely very good. But here is the thing about predictable emotional payoffs delivered by actors of this calibre: they still work. Knowing a punch is coming does not make it hurt less when it lands, and the film’s climax is delivered with enough genuine feeling and enough accumulated goodwill that the tears it is unabashedly engineering are earned rather than simply manufactured. Field and Pullman sell it completely and that is ultimately all that matters.
Remarkably Bright Creatures will definitely be a bit mawkish for some, but it’s a really sweet and charming heart-warmer that the older crowd will absolutely love on a Sunday afternoon. Both leads make the predictable arcs work, and Molina is a scene-stealing delight with his voice work as Marcellus the octopus. A rare solid Netflix release.
