Netflix Below: a sea monster at the Statue of Liberty and Niagara Falls

In October 2026, for the launch of Below, Netflix’s creature series set in Newfoundland, we brought its sea monster to two of the most filmed places in North America, then into the street. Two FOOH films, a patrol boat taken by a tentacle in front of the Statue of Liberty and the same creature under Niagara’s Horseshoe Falls, plus a 3-metre tentacle printed from our 3D model for Toronto’s waterfront. The New York film passed 56.8 million views on Netflix’s Instagram in eight days.

The series and the brief

Below is a six-episode limited series created by Jesse McKeown. Josh Hartnett plays Calvin Penney, a fisherman in a small Newfoundland town that an unidentified sea creature starts to terrorise. It opened the Primetime programme of the Toronto International Film Festival on 10 September 2026 and landed on Netflix worldwide on 8 October, per What’s on Netflix.

A creature that lives in the dark off a remote coast is hard to sell in a feed. Netflix asked us to bring it into the open: short vertical films that look like something a passenger caught on their phone, posted on Netflix’s own accounts in launch week. Then a tentacle for the street.

New York: the patrol boat at Liberty Island

From the rail of a ferry, a red patrol boat crosses in front of the Statue of Liberty. A tentacle comes up beside it, a second one wraps the hull, the boat flips with its propellers spinning in the air, and the harbour closes over it.

A few choices that made it work:

• Wrap the boat, don’t sink a ship. The first storyboard had the creature taking down a bigger vessel. We pushed for tentacles wrapping a small boat instead: readable on a phone in a few seconds, and a shot we could make hold up frame by frame in the time we had.
• A small boat, not a ferry. We tested a ferry as the victim. Netflix kept the small patrol boat for both cities, and we dressed it for each one: the US flag in New York, the Canadian flag at the Falls.
• Keep the shake. The camera moves like a passenger’s phone. That is what makes the film believable, and what makes it hard to track: in the blur there is almost nothing to lock onto. The camera was solved by hand before a single tentacle went in.
• Animation first, water last. Each shot is a chain of simulations: around 8 hours for the water, 2 to 4 hours for the foam and spray, then about 10 hours of render, close to 10 minutes a frame. Any change to the movement restarts the chain, so the animation was signed off in grey before the water was touched.

Niagara Falls: the same creature, another country

Same day, other account. Netflix Canada posted the second sighting: at the foot of the Horseshoe Falls, in the spray, a patrol boat flying the Canadian flag is caught between two tentacles, dragged under and thrown back up, engines out of the water. 456K views.

That is the logic of the campaign. The series is set in a town most people will never visit, so the films put its monster where everybody has been, and where everybody already films. Each film then got its own sound design, built to the frame.

Off the screen: a 3-metre tentacle in Toronto

The creature also had to exist outside a phone. For a street activation in Toronto, Netflix asked us for the tentacle itself: a print-ready 3D model, 10 feet tall, bursting out of the ground, delivered as two separate pieces, the tentacle and its base.

• Matched to the show. The model follows the series’ creature: sucker pads only, no claws, as Netflix’s references asked.
• A pose that reads from across the street. We sent several poses close to each other. The one Netflix picked became the master for printing.
• Built for a printer, not a render. At 3 metres, a model has to be solid, split and ready to cut. From the first pose to the delivered files took under two weeks.

Eat It Up Media, the experiential and out-of-home agency that ran the activation, printed the tentacle from our file and installed it on Toronto’s waterfront, a month after the series premiered in the city. They set it in real paving slabs instead of our modelled base, so it breaks straight through the promenade, and laid floor graphics along the walkway: “Something’s in the water”.

What we took from it

• Take the monster to the landmark. A creature off Newfoundland is a premise. The same creature at the Statue of Liberty is a post people stop on, share and argue about.
• Sign off the movement before the water. Simulation is where the time goes. A day per round is fine once, not five times.
• One creature, screen and street. The printed tentacle follows the same creature as the films, so the activation and the posts look like the same animal.

This was our third Netflix launch of the year, after the necklace we stole off a Sunset Boulevard billboard for Big Mistakes and the Los Angeles sidewalk we opened for Avatar: The Last Airbender. How films like these are shot, built and priced is in our guide to FOOH, or fake out of home.

FAQ

Is the Netflix Below tentacle video real?

No. It is a FOOH film, for fake out of home. The patrol boat, the tentacles, the waves and the spray are CGI: animated, simulated and composited into the shot so they move with the water around them. Nothing was sunk in New York Harbor.

Was the tentacle in Toronto real?

Yes. It is a physical sculpture, 10 feet tall, printed by Eat It Up Media from our 3D model and installed on Toronto’s waterfront for the launch of Below.

Who made the Below videos at the Statue of Liberty and Niagara Falls?

KOSMO®, for Netflix, for the launch of Below in October 2026. The New York film was posted on Netflix’s main Instagram account, the Niagara Falls film on Netflix Canada’s.

How long does a FOOH film like this take?

These took about five weeks, from the first animation tests in early September to final delivery on 9 October. Most of that time is simulation and render: the water, foam and spray of each shot take more than a day per version.

A launch to bring into the open?

Launching a title with a creature, a date or a world to sell? Send us the brief, and we will find the landmark.