Movie Review | Remarkably Bright Creature

“I’d like to be under the sea in an octopus’s garden…”

Remarkably Bright Creature
Directed by Olivia Newman – 2026
Reviewed by Garrett Rowlan

Whenever you have a lyric from a C-list Beatle song running through your head while watching a movie, it’s not a good sign.

But halfway through Remarkably Bright Creatures, a new film starring Sally Fields, those words earwormed their way into my head, replacing, I fear, the heartwarming sentiment I was expected to feel.

Based on a popular novel, Remarkably Bright Creatures—or RBC hereafter—is narrated by a captive octopus named Marcellus, who makes observations from his tank in a seaside Washington town.

The digitally animated creature, voiced by Alfred Molina in a flat tone that itself sounds half-submerged, spends his days hiding from the grasping eyes and fingerprints of schoolchildren on field trips. By night, he communicates through touch and glance with the janitor, Tova Sullivan, played by Sally Fields, a widow with a tragic past. She hobbles around on a sprained ankle and debates whether to move into a retirement facility.

As you might guess, RBC is slight on dramatic material, relying instead on the commentary of Marcellus, the aging octopus; Tova’s interactions with her octogenarian friends; and the arrival in town of a struggling musician seeking the father he never knew.

The film reminded me of those BBC-produced cozy mysteries I’ve become fond of renting from the Pasadena Public Library: small-town atmospheres filled with chumminess and colorful characters. Those mysteries, however, have an unsolved crime to propel the plot. Aside from the struggling musician’s attempt to locate his wealthy, incognito biological father, RBC leaves the viewer with little to chew on—or, I suppose, suck on. Marcellus’s eight arms and clinging suckers not only allow him to move in unique ways, but also to comment on the other characters from the vantage of his tank, a POV oddity that becomes one of the film’s more troubling anomalies.

As usual with this geezer genre, there’s the sobering apprehension of familiar faces, Kathy Baker and Joan Chen in this case, whose wrinkles and tissue breakdown reminded me of my own softening jawline. Colm Meaney, playing a former Grateful Dead fanatic turned coffee-shop owner, serves as Sally Fields’s love interest; his Irish brogue further evokes those BBC cozies.

“She lives in a larger tank than me,” observes Marcellus of the fussy attendant. His periodic comments sprinkle the plot, easing along our understanding of the characters until the metaphorical enclosure around Sally Fields dissolves as she takes the aging Marcellus to the seashore and returns him to his own octopus’s garden.

What the ultimate public reception of RBC will be, I don’t know. I wouldn’t have thought Project Hail Mary, with its spidery co-star in a beach-ball enclosure, would be popular either, so I suppose there’s hope yet for the movie and its slithering protagonist.

> Streaming on Netflix.