There is an unrecognized privilege at work in the experience of the weird or strange, or at least that is what Neasa Hardiman’s Sea Fever (2019), a claustrophobic sea horror, suggests as it follows the crew of the Niamh Cinn Óir in their encounter with a glowing and parasitic creature under the waves. When presented with the monstrosity in the ocean’s waters, the green goo seeping into the ship’s hull, or the eyeless dead of the vessel N-29, the blue-collar crew of the fishing trawler don’t hypothesize where or how this creature came to be—that is a job for the antisocial behaviorist. Instead, they are far more concerned with how the beast will affect their ability to turn a profit and keep the ship afloat.
While other critics are quick to place Sea Fever in the lineage of The Thing (1982) and Alien (1979) or cite how incredibly timely this horror film is given the events of a real-world pandemic, I want to make the case here for Sea Fever’s position on labor and the experience of horror along class lines. To be clear: the glowing nightmare terrifies everyone on board the trawler eventually—the raw fear the beast inspires applies as much to a fish hauler as it does to an academic. However, what is different and important is how these economically diverse characters interact with the weirdness of the monster. As in Alien, the regular crew of the Niamh Cinn Óir have one thing on their minds: making a proper share of profit.
