Martin Owen’s survival thriller Above the Below started with a nightmare-like dream of falling through space and sinking into the sea. “The concept actually came to me in a dream; I was falling through space and then tumbling towards the sea before sinking into the darkness,” Owen said. He co-directed the film with Idris Elba.
Surviving the fall back to Earth leaves the astronauts in Above the Below facing another disaster: their capsule is sinking, their air is dwindling, and reaching the surface could mean leaving someone behind.
Lionsgate’s first images introduce Idris Elba as mission commander Jackson, Caitlin FitzGerald as his co-pilot, and Hero Fiennes Tiffin as Rhodes, a rookie on his first mission. Their damaged return cuts the crew off from the outside world. The studio’s synopsis puts a potentially fatal choice at the center of the story: who attempts the escape, and who stays with the wreckage?
They built a spacecraft set and submerged it for filming. Elba said, “We did build the spacecraft, we submerged it in water, we shot a lot of it underwater.” Production began at Pinewood Studios in November 2023, using 2 stages, including its underwater stage.
That physical confinement is central to the film’s horror potential. A sealed capsule, failing oxygen and the possibility of abandoning a crewmate give the survival story threats of suffocation, drowning and betrayal. Elba has described the human tension as “three human beings facing adversity, and an observation of how they have to deal with each other and work together, or not.”
Cosmic horror remains a possibility viewers might imagine from that journey through space into ocean darkness. The announced plot gives no indication of an alien presence, a sea creature or a supernatural discovery, and the filmmakers have described a sci-fi survival thriller. The supported horror-adjacent elements are claustrophobia, isolation and the fear of dying somewhere help can’t reach.
Owen previously directed the comedy-horror The Loneliest Boy in the World, which also featured Fiennes Tiffin. Above the Below is Elba’s second feature as a director, following Yardie (2018). Elizabeth Morris, Matt Mitchell and Vicki Sargent wrote the screenplay.
The film is rated R for language. Lionsgate will release it in limited US theaters on December 4, 2026.
