The Swarm a science fiction horror thriller where seas exact revenge

The Swarm is a science fiction horror thriller in which the seas and their inhabitants unleashing a violent revolution against mankind

A scene from The Swam xx xxx

Science fiction and adventure tales about the ocean have a long history, beginning with H.G. Wells and Into the Abyss in 1896 and the discovery of an underwater race, part of what the Victorians called “acquamania”.

The emerging film industry wasn’t far behind, when in 1914 journalist J.E. Williamson invented the “photosphere,” a device used to capture scenes under the sea and provided footage for a version of Jules Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, the first full-length movie filmed underwater.

It was the start of the expansive history of underwater filmmaking which profoundly influenced the aesthetics of movies and public perception of the oceans.

“Film is uniquely suited to convey particularly alluring qualities of underwater reality, such as how bodies glide, and how our perception is disoriented,” says Margaret Cohen, author of The Underwater Eye, the illuminating history of aquatic filmmaking. “The submarine environment offers raw material for memorable fantasies, that further are shaped by technologies for filming there and by the human imagination.”

Apart from a few animated series, TV has produced few fictional stories featuring the ocean though those of us who grew up in the late 50s might have trouble forgetting Sea Hunt. In that memorable show, Lloyd Bridges escaped the obscurity of Hollywood’s B-list to take on the role of no-plain-speaking scuba diver Mike Nelson.

Wearing the familiar double hose regulator to distinguish him from the bad guys, who always wore the single hose models, he vigorously outmanoeuvred the villains underwater. He foiled saboteurs, triumphed in countless knife fights beneath the turbulent waves, once even rescuing a downed air force pilot from his sunken aircraft. But the underwater detective with the unmistakeable cool, also awakened interest in marine biology and life beneath ocean surface and raising awareness about the state of the world’s oceans.

Decades later, that brings us to The Swarm, a science fiction horror thriller which also has a strong environmental theme, portraying the seas and their inhabitants unleashing a violent revolution against mankind. Somewhere lurking in the depths is an unknown enemy sick of the reckless treatment of the oceans determined to strike back.

While the concept is not all that original – the New York Times described it as “Jaws rejigged for a generation of Greta Thunbergs” – the series is in fact marvellously preposterous, given it is genuinely scary at times.

The eight-part miniseries was created for German public service broadcaster ZDF but in conjunction with several other international companies, including France Televisions, Italy’s Rai Fiction, streamer Viaplay Group, Hulu Japan, public broadcasters ORF in Austria and SRF in Switzerland.

By originally commissioning the series, ZDF was the lead broadcaster on the venture, and hired one of the most celebrated names in US television, Frank Doelger, the triple Emmy-winning producer of Game of Thrones to oversee the production as executive producer.

“A lot of broadcasters have realised that with the advent of streaming services, the kind of projects that they used to buy from the UK or America – the high-quality, high-production English-language series that were very important to a younger audience and a more international audience – they were no longer going to buy,” Doelger says.

As befits a show with so many international producers – the credits seem endless – the actors also come from different backgrounds and countries. It stars Alexander Karim (Dying of the Light), Cécile de France (The New Pope), Leonie Benesch (Babylon Berlin, The Crown), Barbara Sukowa (Hannah Arendt), and Takuya Kimura (2046, I Come With The Rain).

The Swarm also happens to be the most expensive production in Germany’s history. And it shows.

The series is based on Frank Schätzing’s science-fiction scientific thriller Der Schwarm, first published in 2004, described as tackling “a range of complex issues, drawing upon the challenges of deep-sea oil exploration, marine science, animal ethics and the role of mankind’s relationship with nature.” Selling more than four and a half million copies, it topped Germany’s list of bestselling novels for eight months.

While it exasperated some critics because of its length of 900 pages, reviews were generally positive and Schätzing was congratulated on his ability to illuminate some complex science in the generic form of the eco thriller.

“The questions that it poses are some of the most important questions that we’ll collectively face over the next century, and Frank Schätzing has asked them openly and clearly,” the Canadian critic Paul Jarvey wrote.

And Doelger, on his first reading, quickly picked up on the idea that reckless treatment of the oceans might eventually have disastrous consequences, especially considering David Attenborough’s call for the banning of deep-sea mining.

“When I first read the novel, I thought this is a wonderful example of an intelligent life force which has been on this planet and responsible for the evolution of man from the sea and the wellbeing of oceans, is a force of good and love but also, like a vengeful God, it will seek vengeance on those who pervert the natural order,” Doelger says.

The first episodes, directed by Luke Watson (Ripper Street, Britannia), deftly set the context for the series where seemingly random, unrelated incidents occur in different parts of the world as marine creatures start acting in peculiar ways jeopardising the lives of those who encounter them.

The prologue takes us to Huanchaco in Peru, where a fisherman enters the water on his caballitos de totora, a traditional watercraft made from reed, only to be attacked by an unusually aggressive swarm of small fish, destroying his flimsy boat and then the fisherman.

Then we are taken to a long beach off Vancouver Island, where an Orca whale has washed up with the high tide, part of a pod that migrates every season. An investigation by young whale specialist Leon Anawak (Joshua Odjick) quickly discovers it possibly died after violently attacking a local fishing boat, “acting all crazy” according to the owner. Anawak is also worried about the continuing absence of the humpback and gray whales usually so reliable as a tourist attraction at this time of the year.

In the Shetland Islands, Charlie Wagner (Leonie Benesch) – a young marine biologist who is studying the ocean’s tidal modulations and is increasingly dismayed by her isolation – has trouble with her underwater tracking equipment.

In attempting to rectify the situation at sea in a small skiff, she discovers on the ocean’s surface large amounts of methane gas that is usually found only at great depths. Ice-like deposits made up of water and the decomposing hydrates of concentrated gas litter the surface. Hydrates, another challenge to climate change, remain stable deep beneath the waves, but now Wagner finds herself surrounded by them in the middle of a storm.

Back at Vancouver Island, the whales return but something is seriously threatening about the pods as the Orcas are dangerously unsettled. Something is seriously environmentally disordered.

It’s well-directed by Watson. Nothing is too overstated and the not entirely unfamiliar dystopian conventions and disaster movie cliches are handled with skill and some cinematic style. It all appears very real. Watson drives the still developing plot with its parallel story arcs with enough propulsion that it’s easy to overlook any implausibilities.

And at the start, the supernatural elements of the story are handled with caution; there is some sort of threat abroad but so far what happens in the moment is more important for the characters. Everything must earn its place in this very well-conceived production.

The underwater photography is terrific and the actors, with little to do so far are quietly competent and certainly attractive. The first episode, bingeably short at about 44 minutes, hooks with its sleek style and watery set pieces drawing us in on an empathetic level. We quickly start to feel for these characters thrust into the plot in such a visceral way.

And the growing, unsettling sense that something weird is going on in our oceans is eerily underpinned by a gorgeous immersive score from Dascha Dauenhauer. This also features some beguiling sonic work from designer Noemi Hampel, with a sophisticated, at times unsettling, interplay between music and sound.

Doelger says he approached the series as a kind of “monster movie”, in which we the audience “finally discover that the monster is actually us, that we are the architects of our own demise.”

The Swarm, streaming on Binge.