Post by Mr.HoRrOr on Jul 7, 2011 18:56:30 GMT -5
Plot:A group of friends escaping the city for a weekend away have a simple plan, to tour the coast for a relaxing weekend. Things hit a snag when one of the friends spots a seductive, sultry young woman waving for help off the shore of one of many secluded islands along the coast. Reaching out to rescue her turns deadly and they risk everything to get off the island alive.
Cast:
Eoin Macken
Anna Skellern
Tereza Srbova
Anthony Jabre
My Thoughts:Interesting scare flick.
Review:"Siren" follows three friends who are going on a sailing trip to the coast for a relaxing weekend. Like other films with this premise, "The Ferryman" for example. The movies drama is fueled by the fact that one of the guys has a girlfriend, and the other girlfriend-less guy is the third wheel. But she's screwing both of them, of course. After all, in a movie like this...the groundwork has to be laid by the predictable betrayal. But at the same time, the film manages to ingeniously tie the actions of the films lead female, to the movies ultimate twist.
More on that later. Anyways, back to the sailing trip. The trip takes a strange turn when a man is found floating in the water, and the trio offers to help him. The man is bleeding from the ears, and speaking gibberish. This leads the trio to an island where they come upon another mystery. A mysterious young woman who resides on the island. As the mystery thickens...the group begins to slowly suspect that the mysterious woman might know more about the ranting and now dead man than she is at first letting on.
But even if they find out ''the truth"...will they live to tell the tale? "Siren" works because it uses the old mythology/curse of the evil siren as it's jumping off point for a spooky story. It also takes bits and pieces from the mythology and implements them into the story quite well. Problems come though when the characters begin following the same annoying cliches that many other horror film characters have followed. And have ended up dying as a result of. First off, these people aren't teenagers. More like late 20's adults.
But they are very naive and very dumb. For example, the mysterious woman they find on the island, Silka...seems to be ok with the constant new discoveries of more and more dead bodies on the island. Call me crazy, but if I wash up on an island after being acosted by a crazy rambling guy. And then while I'm on the island, find some chick who is alive and nonchalant about the whole thing. And then that leads to the uncovering of more bodies, I think I'd put 2 and 2 together pretty quickly. Especially considering this chickmight or might not even reside legally on the island.
The trio seemed to not care really about all of this woman's suspicious behavior. Of course this could've been because all three had the hots for her, or she had worked her siren mojo on them. But either way, you wonder when any of these people are gonna get some common sense, and realize that this woman might be the killer. Or atleast might be trouble. Instead, they pretty much are at this womans mercy, a scenario which she uses to her advantage. And then the crazy flashes, dreams, and seductions kick in.
Gotta wonder howmany American soap-opera's the director of this movie has watched. It seems every cheesy horror'ish or trippy scene you've ever seen in a daytime soap, made it's way into this movie. And it didn't help that the characters were total idiots either. I do give the movie some credit though for it's use of blood in the scenes where the characters experience the siren's song and all. Those moments were pretty trippy and creepy on a few levels. But anything other than that makes this movie quite a bore. It's not the lack of action or interesting plot twists that got on my nerves.
But the characters had such a low IQ that I felt my IQ lowering just watching them in this movie. I'm sure the writers were thinking..."this movie will be great if we cast late 20's-aged characters instead of annoying teens." But that doesn't necessarily help your film when the older characters make poor decisions, and have the naivety of typical horror film teenagers. In fact, in this films situation with it's older-skewed characters, it made all of the ignorance of what was really happening around them and to them even more annoying.
You were just waiting for one of the characters to fix the damn boat, and sail away from the island. After finally getting it about this girl and her evil ways. But alas, these people were total morons. And the funnier fact was that one of the films male leads worked a high-paying corporate job, mentioned in some early dialogue. I'm sure that company was on it's way to a bright future with that rocket scientist running things.
"Siren" does however manage to make up somewhat, for it's amazing character lameness, with an interesting ending. The ending suggests things coming full circle, and even suggests that the siren myth might be part of a larger scope. Atleast in the universe of this movie. It also suggests an explanation for why the mysterious Silka was even on that island in the first place. Cool away to finish things off indeed. But again, the characters being such dopes, really got on my nerves.
And it did it enough for me to for the most part, thumbs-down this movie. "Siren" tries to do some new things, and it mostly succeeds. But the poor character development is really this movies magic bullet. Beyond the mysterious and twisted Silka, who is the films villainess...the good guys are hard to root for because they're so moronic. In the end, you kind of end up rotting for the siren to put these low IQ homosapiens out of their misery.
Positives:Tereza Srbova gave a good performance as Silka. The flash/nightmare scenes were also well done in the vein of true horror. The ending is a home run also.
Negatives:Characters, characters, characters. The trio of protagonists lacked common sense so badly it was pathetic.
Overall:One and a half stars out of four.