Siren Review

• 19th Jun 2011

At the heart of Siren is a great idea that could revitalise the horror genre (stay with me). Zombies are hot right now, but they aren’t sexy (unless, of course, you are a very specific kind of necrophiliac, in which case … eww). Vampires are totally sexy, but they’re a bit 2009 and plus, there’s the whole Twilight-wussification thing. The ghouls populating the likes of Paranormal Activity and The Blair Witch Project have no screen presence – who knows if they’re sexy or not? The film world is crying out for the next big thing in hot supernatural beings who want to kill us.

Perhaps Siren provides the answer, if nothing else. Mermaids, after all, are probably where we get the term ‘dead sexy’. As far as horror goes, they’re also an untapped resource. The Little Mermaid has a lot to answer for; the mermaids of Greek myth were dreadful old-school style. They hung out on rocks in all weathers, crooning to lonely passing sailors only to lure them to their deaths. Their only purpose was to look gorgeous from the waist up and ensure that men died horrible deaths that involved their bodies being bashed to smithereens on razor-sharp rocks and their lungs filled with sea water. But as we know, mermaids have bare bosoms and they don’t have any lady-bits Down There: female sexuality is so scary that even the fictional embodiments of it aren’t allowed hoo-hahs.

Sadly, Siren is lacking in crucial areas. The film opens promisingly enough, with lovely brunette Lindsay Lohan-lookalike Anna Skellern nearly causing her beefcake boyfriend to crash their car just because she’s so damn attractive. (Yes, this is a portent of things to come.) Beefcake and Brunette then pick up Brunette’s ex-boyfriend, World Travelling Guy. We can tell he is more sensitive than Beefcake because unlike Beefcake he doesn’t earn tons of money and he wears pendants on leather thongs around his neck.

The three of them go on a sailing holiday (top tip: don’t travel on a boat named for Persephone, Queen of the Underworld) that capsizes when they rescue an emaciated dude from a deserted island only moments before he starts bleeding from the ears and drops dead. Going ashore to bury him (on the flimsiest pretext imaginable), the trio meet Silka (Tereza Srbova). Given the title, it’s not a spoiler to tell you that she is The Most Uncharismatic Mermaid Ever™.

Srbova is more dead fish than alluring femme fatale, and she helps to sink Siren faster than you can say “But the whole film stinks.” As soon as the credits rolled I had trouble remembering what she looked like, beyond “pretty, blonde.” Even her allegedly mesmerising song of doom is an instantly forgettable bit of pop-lite fluff. And why does it take her so long to get around to singing it? Why does she want to keep the guys around when it’s plainly Brunette she’s interested in doing a bit of synchronised swimming with?

For a film aiming for psychological terror over gross-out gore, it would help if there were at least one character whose fate you could care about. Unfortunately, Beefcake is a total buttmunch – his last-minute conversion to caring partner is wholly unconvincing – and World Travelling Guy is only there to help increase the (very small) number of things on screen that can run and bleed. Since the box cover compares Siren to The Hunger, there’s never any reason to worry about Brunette.

Is there anything to like about Siren beyond its premise? Well, for what it’s worth, in spite of her thankless role as Hot Chick in Peril and accordingly lousy dialogue, I thought Anna Skellern had great screen presence. But you’d still be well advised to just throw Siren back into the murky depths from whence it came.

Clare Moody