Remarkably Bright Creatures on Netflix—the new movie adaptation of the best-selling 2022 mystery novel by Shelby Van Pelt—takes viewers inside the mind of a giant octopus. But it also takes them around Vancouver, Canada.
Directed by Olivia Newman (Where the Crawdads Sing), who also adapted the script with co-writer John Whittington, Remarkably Bright Creatures tells the story of a lonely, 70-year-old widow named Tova (Sally Field) who is still grappling with the death of her son, decades later. She doesn’t go to therapy, but she does share her thoughts with the giant octopus, Marcellus, at the aquarium where she works as a cleaning lady. With a little help from Marcellus and a new friend, played by Lewis Pullman, Tova navigates through her grief and faces the difficult decision of whether to leave behind the home where she raised her son.
The story takes place in the Pacific Northwest, in a fictional town called Sowell Bay, nearby where author Shelby Van Pelt is from in Washington State. The Remarkably Bright Creatures movie was not filmed in Washington State, but it was filmed not too far from there, in Vancouver, Canada. Read on to learn more about the Remarkably Bright Creatures filming locations.
Where was the Remarkably Bright Creatures movie filmed?
The Remarkably Bright Creatures movie was filmed in Vancouver and the surrounding area in British Columbia, Canada, both on locations and on sets.
As reported by Atlas of Wonders, the exterior shots of the Sowell Bay Aquarium where Tova works were actually digitally enhanced shots of the Deep Cove Yacht Club in North Vancouver. The interior scenes at the aquarium were filmed, for the most part, on sets. That said, the set was at least partially modeled after the Vancouver Aquarium. While Marcellus the octopus is mostly CGI, he was modeled after a real-life octopus named Agetha.
“But we wanted it to be as photo real as possible, so that we could also shoot a real giant Pacific octopus named Agnetha, who lives at the Vancouver Aquarium,” director Olivia Newman told Decider in a recent interview. “What we did was we took hours of footage of Agnetha in her tank, so that we could study octopus behavior, and create an exact replica of Agnetha. [We used] footage of Agnetha interchangeably in the movie, with our CGI. Agnetha does appear in the movie.”
Newman added that the production team built a replica of Agnetha’s real tank at the Vancouver aquarium for the film set, and used a puppet version of Agnetha for lighting reference.
Some other interior shots of the aquarium were filmed at the Vancouver Aquarium, including some of the shots of Tova cleaning the various fish tanks.
Much of the exterior, on-location scenes were filmed in Deep Cove, a community in the easternmost part of the District of North Vancouver. The dock that serves as the emotional climax of the movie is the Deep Cove Government Dock, a public dock where boats can moor for free.
The main street in downtown Deep Cove, Gallant Avenue, served as the main street for the fictional Pacific Northwest city of Sowell Bay, and several of the downtown Deep Cove shops serves as the storefronts for the stores in the movie. That includes Cafe Eh, a Deep Cove coffee shop that was transformed into a surf shop where Cameron (Lewis Pullman) meets Avery (Sofia Black-D’Elia).
Other Remarkably Bright Creatures filming locations include a beach in Whytecliff Park, an ocean side park located near near West Vancouver’s Horseshoe Bay Neighborhood; the Blue Canoe Waterfront Restaurant in Steveston Village in Richmond; and Bufala Pizzeria in North Vancouver.
So there you have it! If you want to take a tour of the Remarkably Bright Creatures filming locations, take a trip north to Vancouver. Be sure to stop by the Vancouver Aquarium to say hi to Agnetha!
Decider reached out to the Vancouver Aquarium to ask after Agnetha’s well-being, and we are happy to report that yes, Agnetha is still alive. She is three years old, and lives in the Pacific Canada Pavilion area of the aquarium.
