There are some shows and movies you watch while scrolling TikTok at the same time, occasionally looking up when something explodes. Then there are the ones that quietly sneak up on you, grab you by the emotional throat and leave you staring at the ceiling afterwards reconsidering your entire life. Remarkably Bright Creatures is firmly the latter.
Netflix’s adaptation of Shelby Van Pelt’s bestselling 2022 novel could’ve easily fallen into the trap that a lot of heartwarming stories do: becoming overly sentimental, painfully corny, or trying way too hard to manufacture meaning. Instead, it manages to be genuinely moving without feeling manipulative, which is honestly rarer than it should be.
And yes, somehow, an octopus is at the centre of it all.
The story follows Tova (played by iconic diva Sally Field), an elderly widow working night shifts at an aquarium while quietly carrying decades of grief after the disappearance of her son. During her time at the aquarium, she forms an unlikely friendship with Marcellus, a deeply intelligent, deeply sarcastic giant Pacific octopus (voiced by beloved actor Alfred Molina). Sounds absurd on paper, but within about 20 minutes, you’ll be fully emotionally invested in this grumpy sea creature’s opinions on humanity.
Which is maybe the film’s greatest strength: it understands that loneliness can make people strange, closed off and quietly desperate for connection. It never treats its characters like caricatures or trauma delivery systems. Everyone feels painfully human, from Tova’s restrained sadness to Cameron’s (Lewis Pullman) messy search for purpose and belonging.
Even Marcellus somehow feels more emotionally articulate than most men on dating apps.
What makes Remarkably Bright Creatures hit so hard is that it’s not really about grief in the dramatic, sweeping sense we usually see on screen. It’s about the quieter version of grief, the kind that settles into everyday life. The kind you carry while making coffee, clocking into work, or avoiding conversations you don’t know how to have anymore.
And despite all of that emotional weight, the film never becomes unbearably bleak. It’s warm. Funny, even. Marcellus delivers some of the sharpest observations in the entire story, and there’s a softness running underneath everything that stops it from collapsing into misery porn.
It’s visually STUNNING too. The aquarium setting feels dreamlike without becoming distracting, and there’s something weirdly calming about spending two hours submerged in blue light watching emotionally damaged people slowly find their way back to one another.
But the real reason this story works is because it taps into something most people probably don’t admit out loud: we all want to feel seen. We want to believe our lives matter to someone, even after loss, even after failure, even after years of feeling disconnected from the people around us.
Apparently, sometimes that validation comes from an octopus.
By the end, Remarkably Bright Creatures leaves you with that rare kind of emotional ache that only the best stories manage to pull off, the feeling of having been gently cracked open. It’s tender without being cheesy, profound without trying to sound profound, and quietly devastating in the most beautiful way.
Genuinely, I didn’t expect an octopus to emotionally ruin me, but here we are.
Wanna be ruined as well? Go check it out on Netflix! Peep the trailer below:
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