Review by Ben Bussey
Ugh. You hear there’s a Serbian creature feature about deadly sirens luring pretty young party people to their deaths on a sunkissed island, and the first impulse is to expect something fun. No, it doesn’t sound like an Oscar-winner, but it does sound like the makings of a good night in with beer and pizza. I dunno – perhaps if the beer is stronger than average and the pizza is phenomenally good, there might still be the potential for a pleasant evening with this one playing in the background – but when taken in stone cold sober whilst wearing one’s critic hat, I for one tend not to be in quite so forgiving a mood.
I guess the first clue of a problem is the rather blunt title change, from the simple and entirely appropriate original Nymph, to the spelling-it-all-out-in-black-and-white-so-there-can-be-no-misunderstanding Killer Mermaids. Immediately this invites nitpicking, as it implies mermaids plural, when in fact there’s only the one; and by announcing her presence right then and there in the title and throwing her front and centre in the marketing (including the – surprise surprise – massively misleading DVD cover art), we’re immediately robbed of any chance at being genuinely surprised by this movie. Not that I can imagine it would have had much impact either way. Call it Nymph, call it Killer Mermaids, call it Soggy Serbian Film; any way you cut it this is a boringly predictable and predictably boring horror movie, doing its utmost to follow a formula for a supposedly sexy slasher format but falling flat on its gym-toned arse.
And, oh yes, there are some very prominent arses on show here, in particular that of second female lead Natalie Burn. Don’t worry, just on the very, very slim chance you miss it in her first very skimpy bikini shot, there are plenty more on the way, and when Ms Burn isn’t in her bikini she’s generally wearing very short shorts. None of this is by any means a complaint; director Milan Todorovic clearly recognised his main selling point when he saw it. But if you’re hoping for more in terms of titillation, you may well be left somewhat disappointed, as beyond a spot of gratuitous toplessness from the first victim, Killer Mermaids is a surprisingly chaste affair, hoping instead to win over the audience with… oh dear… plot and dialogue.
One of the curious oddities of Killer Mermaids is that, despite it being a Serbian production set in the Mediterranean with a largely local cast, it’s shot entirely in English. Okay, so the cast seem proficient enough, but it’s quite obvious that it isn’t their first language, and given the European setting and prevalence of European characters it hardly seems appropriate anyway, resulting in an even greater sense of artifice about the whole thing. The only native English speaker of the bunch is Kristina Klebe, who I must admit I didn’t recognise from her earlier role in Rob Zombie’s Halloween. She proved an inadequate substitute for PJ Soles in that film, and she isn’t exactly the most compelling lead here as American journalist Kelly, vacationing in the Mediterranean with her old pal Lucy (Burn) whilst catching up with another old college buddy, and a one-time flame of Lucy’s – who, without telling them, has gone and got engaged, and brought his betrothed along with him. Tag on one more dude in the hopes of boosting sexual tension, and the gang are off, talking and behaving like your typical horror movie high school kids despite the fact they’re all quite clearly in their mid-to-late thirties.
Anyway, rather than just hanging out at bars and clubs, the ensemble decide to take a boat trip out to a remote island that houses an abandoned prison – even though a painfully wasted and extremely bored-looking Franco Nero warns them not to go out there (yes, I’m sorry to say Franco Nero is now the “it’s got a death curse” guy). Out they all go in a little dinghy, despite Kelly’s morbid fear of the water (gee, wonder if she’ll need to confront that before the end), and naturally things get sour not long after they arrive. There’s a maniacal killer on the island with them – but it soon comes to light that he’s in fact only a puppet for another, ever more sinister threat. No prizes for guessing what that might turn out to be.
Mermaids remain largely virgin territory for horror, and the creature designs on show here aren’t bad at all, with Zorana Kostic Obradovic making for a pretty effective sinister seductress in the Mathilda May mould – so the potential was clearly there for something cool and different here. Unfortunately, Killer Mermaids never manages to rise above formulaic tedium. The script is clearly trying to make things a bit more emotional and character-based than we might expect, but when the characters are as thoroughly unlikeable as this and the dialogue so overwrought and annoying, it just feels torturous. It’s one of those instances when the killing can’t start soon enough, but when it finally happens none of it hits home the way it should, with scarcely a single memorable death: I’m a little baffled that the BBFC (contrary to the art above, which quite reasonably predicted a 15) have slapped this with an 18 for ‘strong violence and gore,’ as it all feels pretty tame by today’s standards. Indeed, by any standards Killer Mermaids is tame, tepid, tedious, with nothing to support it beyond a little eye candy, and most of that is there in the trailer below (they didn’t pick that screengrab by accident); watch that, and go ‘phwoar’ at the butt shots by all means, but the film itself is one to miss.
Killer Mermaids is available to download from 15th June and comes to DVD on 29th June, from Kaleidoscope.