I had so much fun with Scarecrow’s Revenge in my last column that I hastened to grab the other Louisa Warren disc from my dollar store pile. The Mermaid’s Curse is another of the six films Warren released in 2019 (one of which she co-directed with someone named Nick Minaj, and I’m dying to know if that’s an alias).
Unlike Scarecrow’s Revenge, this one is set in a present-day seaside town and follows Jake (Tom Hendryk), a cub reporter looking to make his name by breaking a big story about a string of disappearances he suspects is the work of a serial killer. After he catches his girlfriend Charlotte (Nina Jay) cheating with his roommate and kicks them both out, Jake finds an injured woman (Rebecca Finch) on the beach and brings her home to care for her. Jake quickly falls for her, unaware that she is a siren who must eat people to keep her body from decaying. As Jake sequesters himself with his man-eating squeeze, it’s up to Charlotte to find out the truth before it’s too late.
The Mermaid’s Curse plays fast and loose with its titular creatures. They walk on human legs and seem to have no problem being away from water. Given their seductiveness and supernatural scream, “siren” would be a better term than “mermaid,” though neither word is used in the film.
After a flashback sequence established the creatures’ backstory, it dawned on me that this might be a riff on a higher-profile British horror movie from a year prior: Matthew Butler-Hart’s The Isle. As in the earlier film, the sirens are the souls of raped and murdered women out for revenge. And just like with The Isle, once I found out the monsters’ origins in a howl of rage against toxic masculinity, I had a hard time thinking of them as the bad guys, even if they do kill indiscriminately.
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In a subplot, Charlotte knows she messed up by cheating on Jake, and commits to making things right. From a storytelling perspective, it helps to get her out of the picture long enough for Jake to fall in love with the siren, then bring her back to defeat the monster in a final act of “you can’t have my man!” girlbossery. But Jake is so boring that the idea of two chicks fighting to the death over him is a tough sell, and I have to wonder why a film that seems to care about abused women would resort to the patriarchal trope of pitting women against each other.
Gender politics aside, The Mermaid’s Curse is punchy and quick-moving, sidestepping the tedium that can plague movies of this ilk, but can’t shake that flat, cheap digital video look, which is extra noticeable since so much of the film takes place at night. On the whole, Scarecrow’s Revenge looks nicer, though The Mermaid’s Curse is better-written. But if you find yourself with a buck and a half to spend, and an interest in finding out what’s been happening in micro-budget British horror, you can’t go wrong with either.
Misleading box art? Yep, no tails on these ladies.
Verdict: Dollar Store Decent
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