Film Review: Remarkably Bright Creatures

Remarkably Bright Creatures
Director: Olivia Newman
Anonymous Content, Night Owl Stories
Streaming on Netflix: 05.08.2026

There are times as a critic that the steady stream of serviceable but uninspired mediocrity coming from Hollywood starts to blend together. I find myself yearning for a movie that I can feel really strongly about one way or another. Remarkably Bright Creatures fits the bill, but not the way one might hope.

In a quiet, coastal town, widowed night janitor Tova Sullivan (Sally Field, Places in the Heart, Lincoln) keeps to a rigid routine, while still grieving her son’s long-ago disappearance. At the aquarium, she forms a silent understanding with Marcellus, a remarkably observant octopus (voiced by Alfred Molina, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Spider-Man 2) who secretly slips from his tank at night. Meanwhile, drifting thirty-something Cameron (Lewis Pullman, Top Gun: Maverick, Thunderbolts*) arrives searching for his estranged father, unaware of his ties to the town. As Marcellus pieces together the truth, the narrative gradually draws Tova and Cameron together, revealing a hidden family connection that reframes their pasts and offers both a chance at healing.

Based on the best-selling novel by Shelby Van Pelt, Remarkably Bright Creatures is the kind of made-for-book-club story that fools people into thinking it has merit when it’s on the page, allowing them to exercise their imaginations, which they become invested in as they read. By the time they’ve ingested all of those words spread out over hundreds of pages, they can’t even let in the thought that it might be stupid, because they’ve already recommended it to 12 people. When translated to the screen, however, the labored and insipid treacliness of it all feels rather overwhelming. The narrative of Tova and Cameron finding each other and in doing so, finding a surrogate family that turns out to be even more than that (third act plot twist alert) is full of more than enough silly, convoluted and clumsy storytelling before you throw in “and it’s narrated by an octopus!” Why is it narrated by an octopus? Why does the octopus know more than enough intricate details about humans to tell the story smoothly, but lack just enough details that feeble gags about his confused observations on humanity can become gratingly cutesy? Who is this movie made for?

I’m a sentimental guy, and if you get me feeling emotionally invested in the slightest, I can be an absolute sap. But somehow an octopus spouting dialogue like “The Cleaning Lady’s Heart — I must find a way to heal it. It’s the least I can do to repay her for saving mine” fell short of moving for me. In fact, I can’t remember the last time I didn’t cry like that, unless it was when all of those superheroes (whom we all knew damn well had multiple solo movies and a direct sequel lined up) “died” in Avengers: Infinity War. The characters all feel like they were taken from a template. Director Olivia Newman (Where the Crawdads Sing) knows how to make a melodrama look glossy, though she seems quite unaware that sometimes less is more when it comes to a computer-generated octopus, and her sense of pacing is sluggish even with a short run time.

Field and Pullman are both nearly incapable of giving a bad performance, and their appealing pairing may be enough for some audiences to swallow this concoction. Molina excludes charm and wisdom, but he’s also prone to a certain degree of hamminess, and if you’re not already thinking “Wait, they cast Doctor Octopus as the voice of the octopus?,” I sincerely hope that I’ve just ruined your ability to not be constantly distracted by this odd fact. Colm Meaney (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, The Englishman Who Went Up a Hill But Came Down a Mountain) is likable as a former Deadhead who rents Cameron a room, but he’s strictly here to deliver exposition with the blunt force of a sledgehammer (“It’s just she’s been through a lot — her husband getting sick and dying, and the way she lost her son. And the awful things people said!”).

For me at least, Remarkably Bright Creatures proved to be an insufferable ordeal that felt like the most grueling experience I’ve had in trying to make it through a movie in quite some time. By the time it was over, the only moment that resonated at all with me was when Marcellus said, ”Thank God, I can go back to watch algae grow,” because that’s exactly how I felt as the credits began to roll. —Patrick Gibbs

Read more on the latest film and television show reviews:
Film Review: You, Me & Tuscany
Down to Binge DTF St. Louis