Killer Mermaid (2014)

I recently saw the 1979 Tarkovsky film Stalker, which was about a man who led people into a strange other dimension called The Zone to search for their innermost desires. And it rang true with me, because I also am about to embark on a similar journey.

For you see, I am also searching for something – a purpose in my life. I've heard all the legends and stories; all the hushed whispers of those who have tried and failed at the task I am going to undertake today. This is the path I need to take, for at the end of it, there supposedly lies a grand, ultimate truth that will set my soul at ease and answer all my questions. It is in a cruel twist of fate that I realize what road I must travel down – this movie contains the answers I seek.

Director: Milan Todorovic

Starring: Kristina Klebe, Natalie Burn

IMDb

Yes, Killer Mermaid. It's a Serbian horror film that is actually, apparently, the first 'creature flick' made in the country, which is pretty cool. What isn't cool is the fact that everything about it is stale and tired already. It is a strange, boring journey with many perilous obstacles that could be the death of me. This is the voyage of legends, which no man has survived awake or with all his brain cells. If I fall asleep, I lose the game and have to start over. Wish me luck!

It starts off rather innocuously, as it is in all aspects a regular film – it has characters speaking English and not breaking off into crying screaming gibberish, and they are talking to each other and not to hallucinations only they can see. Also, the dialogue seems to all go in one direction and seems like it's in the same language. So it's good – we know we're in our own reality, which is the standard I have come to start out all these reviews with, because that way at least nothing is as bad as Bad Kids Go to Hell.

Unfortunately, what seemed like a comfortingly bland beginning gives way to my first obstacle, as I was lulled into a false sense of security – The Bland and Stupid Opening Kill. The opening kill scene is these two, who come to the beach to take off their shirts, stand on the sand and make out – I'm sure that's a great pastime in Serbia where this was filmed. Leave your pants on and don't get in the water – just take off your shirts. That's where the real sexiness is.

Ohhh yeah, cue the funky music.

Then the guy says he hears a strange sound, and the girl assures him it's just a club nearby. They don't seem to be AROUND any clubs, and I'm really not sure what clubs play weird atonal ocean music. I wouldn't want to go there though.

I wade through the ocean of cliche with no stars to guide my way. I can feel the reality setting in - I'm on my own, and there is no one to help me. The opening kill characters get killed off by a guy who clearly has watched too I Know What You Did Last Summer too many goddamn times. Like, seriously, a hook used to kill them? That's so last summer.

You've done something new this week, Rebecca - did you cut your hair?

The sludgelike miasma of the movie rolls over me in waves. I can already feel my eyelids growing heavier. But this is only the beginning of the bizarre and terrible challenges of the movie. The next challenge to overcome is the main plot, involving two American chicks who look like supermodels going on vacation to Serbia. Because, ya know, why not? We need some implausible reason to set this in Serbia! No, we can't just have a movie set there! We have to throw American tourists in like every other movie on the planet!

Already, I feel my sanity starting to go. Sarcasm won't save me this time. This is the second horrible trap the movie springs on me – that of the Awful Dialogue and the Cliche Characters. These two just blather on and on about nonsense like how hot the one girl's boss is.

"Is your editor hot?"
"No, he's in his 40s and overweight."
"...so, he's hot?"

Also, yeah, they're here to see an old boyfriend of the one chick's from college, who now has a fiancee. Because that sounds like a good idea, doesn't it? It's practically tailored for the next episode of Dr. Phil. Cause, you know, most adults let their future spouses invite random hot supermodel-looking foreigners to come hang out for a weekend. If it sounds like a set-up for a porno, it's good enough for your horror movie.

I already feel my feet sinking, as if I've stepped in quicksand. I grasp for something to hold onto, but there is nothing. This is the next stage of traps the movie has set up – The Filler Scenes. This is a sequence of utterly dull and drab scenes of these morons actually trying to relate to the audience. This movie is so bad at that that I relate more to this than to these characters:

Yes – the movie is reverting me to a primal form. It's winding back the clock on humanity, and now suddenly, I can relate to apes. This is torture. It's the movie's test getting real. This has become an ordeal on the level of the perils Odysseus faces in The Odyssey.

Seriously – we really need all these scenes of these assholes cheating on one another, lying about it AND sitting around at a dinner table blathering about a deserted island with an old prison they want to visit? That last one is fine, but the FIRST TWO? Just unacceptable. The dialogue is just the pits, and sitting through these airheads talking about whether or not Mr. Serbian Ex Boyfriend has a guy friend she can hook up with is torture of a magnitude I have not known in at least a few weeks since I saw Ouija.

I really wanted him to just straight up say 'no, you're awful.' Ya know – be honest. It would make it better for me.

Fuck. There's even a scene where a grizzled old man in a fisherman's hat warns them not to go to the island? I'd like to say it's better to play it straight than to do the whole dumb irony thing, but I really think in Serbia, they just got the first Friday the 13th like, a few years ago, so this seems fresh and new to them.

"I only drink when I'm remembering contrived tragic backstories. And I'm always doing that." 

Also, one of the characters mentions that the guy looks like he's from I Know What You Did Last Summer. What? How dare you steal my joke? That's the first time a movie has done that. Truly, this is a devious plot – what lengths will they go to to undermine everything that I do?

Sigh. I just don't know if this is worth it. What kind of enlightenment could possibly be worth sitting through more of this movie's grueling tests of my will? Is it worth it to finish this? Who am I, really? What am I going to gain for finishing this movie? I feel the weight of all of this settling in – all the dumb characters, all the insipid lines and all the rehashed plotlines – and I sit down. I pause the movie. I reflect for a moment on all that I have seen and all that still lies ahead.

And I decide, in this moment of truth, that not finishing this piece of shit movie would be worse than finishing it, because if I don't finish it, then I just watched half of it for nothing.

And so I turn the movie back on.

The film's final test is by far the worst one – the Stunted, Dull Horror Movie Chase. The settings could be worse I suppose. But everything else is toxic poison. It even throws in some of the previous awful cliches when we get scenes of one girl whose brother drowned struggling with how to deal with her fear of water. And yet she agreed to come on vacation to a place with a lot of water and hang out near it the entire time. I don't know about you, but to me that sounds brain-fuckingly retarded.

Oh, a pointless flirting scene for a romance that goes nowhere. Excuse me while I drift further into the realm of sleep...

Then we just get a bunch of extremely rote scenes of them wandering around the prison. It's every scene you've seen in every other dumb movie like this. I want to be nicer since this is a foreign film and made on a fairly low budget I imagine. But there's really no excuse for poor dialogue and poor writing. The movie very nearly did me in with this, as it lasts for the entire rest of the film – a long, slow, agonizing trudge through nothingness and nonsense.

Like, really, how serious does the tone need to be in a movie about a bunch of dumb kids finding an island with a guy feeding random kill victims to a mermaid? This whole thing is about as silly and fun as a funeral procession for a guy everyone liked. The one thing that could have saved this was a goofy, fast paced thrill ride, but all of that was squeezed out of this movie like a tube of toothpaste.

That's really only a D minus mermaid. You can do better.

And when they randomly run into Exposition Man from earlier, Mr. I Know What You Did Last Summer, who tells them a story in a very monotone voice about how he was the only survivor of a shipwreck on this island years ago after the mermaid killed his crewmen. Wow. How sad. Let me play the world's smallest violin.

The final battle scene goes on way too long and is yet another solution to your insomnia. Lots of ominous sounding dialogue delivered in boring hushed monotones and lots of scrambling around on a boat. Yaaaaaawwwwwwnnnnnnnn. They finally kill the dumb mermaid after it attacks them on land, which was a dumb plan from the monster's part. Really, you'd think she'd have been smart enough to not go to the one place where the humans have the advantage.

RIP...on second thought, no, I changed my mind. I don't care.

Phew. What a shit-show. Bad characters, a cliche plot and nothing remotely exciting about it, due in no small part to the ludicrous 'dark' tone the whole thing has. It's cool that this is the first Serbian 'creature flick,' and I hope they make more, but that doesn't excuse the lame things about the movie, as much as I want it to.

But in the end, I made it through the movie. I completed my vision quest journey. I am a weary traveler, and I think I deserve to know what it is that will complete my yearning soul.

So. What is it? What is the light at the end of the long, dark, murky tunnel of this movie?

Yeah, y'know what? Not worth it!

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Creep (2014)

The Internet is a scary place where sometimes your kids will go on a chat video site and see a picture of a penis. But the things that happen in this week's movie, entitled Creep, might be far worse than that. I'm not going to make any stances for or against that logic, but it's a possibility, is all I'm saying.

Director: Patrick Brice

Starring: Patrick Brice, Mark Duplass

IMDb

Co-written with Michelle.

This is a bit of a personal project directed, written and starred in by the same two guys – Patrick Brice and Mark Duplass. It's a found footage thing about this freelance cameraman who answers a Craigslist ad and then finds himself filming this really weird guy. Things just get stranger from there. And by stranger, I mean completely bat-shit, flinging poop at the walls, Brad Pitt in 12 Monkeys crazy.

We start off with main character Aaron, played by Brice, filming himself while driving – which is a thing that everyone does in real life. I am filming myself write and edit this review. No, it's not weird. These movies have taught me it's the most normal thing in the world to just have a camera on while you're by yourself, talking to yourself at all times.

You know what we need more of? Uncharismatic white guys filming themselves.

He meets up with Josef, played by Duplass, a strange man who likes to jump out of nowhere and do random jump scares. That’s totally a legit character quality and not just a cheap way to make the audience flinch for a second.

What do you mean I’m being sarcastic? I’ve never done that. Everything I say is 100% honest, and you can tell because I’m saying it on the Internet, where everything is believable.

Josef explains he has terminal brain cancer and is going to die in two months, so he wants Aaron to film a video for his unborn son. Wow. That got dark – how can I even make jokes about this? What kind of monster am I? Eh, on second thought, I don't care, because it's just a character in a movie.

Because after that, we immediately delve into WTF territory as Josef tells Aaron to film him taking a bath completely naked and miming how he'd bathe his son if he had a chance. You may be inclined to say it's sweet if a bit weird, but at one point, I shit you not, Josef pretends to kill himself by sinking down below the bath water. But just for another super hilarious jump scare! Yes, the old ‘cancer patient suicide joke’ is always a classic.

And yet Aaron doesn't care and just goes with it anyway, because that's the sort of thing a regular human being does. That's the main recurring theme in the movie; Josef doing weird shit and Aaron acting more desensitized than a 20-year police veteran would be to violent crime scenes, never finding it weird enough to say something or just straight up leave like a normal person would.

Then Josef wants to show Aaron his creepy wolf mask he keeps in the closet, and also does a dance with it on. Which is a scene I am sure I could make jokes about, but honestly, it would take me the whole rest of the review. Because this right here is the point where all sanity officially checks out for good.

What is this? Where am I? What is reality?

Then it's time to go hang out in the woods, where Josef immediately sprints off into nowhere without giving Aaron any warning. I think it would be hilarious, and a relief, if he never came back and just ran off.

Go, flee, my son, and never return.

But that doesn't happen – instead we get a rambling, headache-inducing, almost psychedelic scene of the two wandering in the woods. It's a bit like Blair Witch on happy pills. After watching it, I forgot who I was. Since Aaron’s brain is just one tiny marble rolling around in a vast empty space, he doesn’t seem to think anything is wrong when Josef asks if Aaron thought he was going to kill him with an ax Aaron saw outside his house earlier.

Who am I?

Seriously, what would it take to get you to realize this Josef guy isn't trustworthy? Would you have to see his torture sex dungeon full of sex slaves? “Hmm, well, it's weird, but I'll keep filming!”

After that, we get a scene of them sitting at a diner and Aaron tells Josef a story about how he used to pee his pants all the time. That's great. It really does sum up how he became the dead-eyed, obviously socially awkward adult he is now. That’s character development!

That night, over whiskey, Josef “confesses” that he caught his wife looking at animal porn one night, and then got the brilliant idea to break into her room at night wearing that wolf mask and rape her with it, which apparently she liked, because she looked at animal porn. Awesome story, bro! Man, what would I do with my life if I never heard that story? I would have really been missing out.

Aaron, fearing for his life at this point, drugs Josef's drink and gets him to fall asleep, but then, bafflingly, still isn't able to actually escape – because he's probably the type of person whose mother picked out his clothes until he was a senior in college.

Hiding in the fucking bathroom talking on the phone doesn't equal escaping. How can you not escape when the guy you're escaping from is in a drug-induced comatose sleep? How much less can you do, outside of just killing yourself for him?

Conveniently right as Aaron actually attempts to escape like a sane person would, Josef wakes up and tries to block his way at the door while wearing the wolf mask, growling like an animal and clearly intending to do him harm...

After that, it cuts to black and we see Josef in the woods digging a grave with black trash bags around him. For a second it looks like he actually killed Aaron, but nope! It's just a DVD he sent Aaron, who is at home safe and just lounging around his house doing nothing in a T-shirt and shorts. Lame!

Aaron is still talking to his camera despite the fact that his assignment with Josef is over now, which is because the movie is fucking dumb. He says he thought the whole thing with Josef was “just a weird thing that happened,” and that he didn't think about it much.

Really now. You were at this house with a man who insisted on bathing in front of you and made comments about how you thought he wanted to kill you, AND told you a story about raping his wife, AND blocked your path to the door wearing a wolf mask...and you didn't think anything was super scary about that? No warning bells went off? Dude, I'm giving up on you. You're dead to me now.

He also says he’s been having nightmares about being in the tub with Josef, both wearing wolf masks, and then he realizes in the dream that he’s a baby and bathing in blood. This apparently happens several times, but does THAT little detail cause even an inch of fear in dead-brained Aaron? Nope. Not an ounce. He’s as nonchalant about it as he would be about going to the DMV. I mean, yeah, he's a bit concerned, like a mistake was found on his tax return, but no big deal!

"I actually kinda LIKED the dream..."

Later on there’s another scene where Josef sends him a toy wolf with a heart shaped locket up its ass, and inside the locket is pictures of them like they’re in love or something. Aaron does finally call the police after THAT, which is like putting a bandaid on someone whose leg just got eaten by a shark. The police don’t help. Probably because they know he’s a lost cause.

They just don't like the adults from "Peanuts."

The “climax” of the film comes when Aaron hears a noise at night and starts looking around for what caused it. The camera catches Josef just standing creepily by the door, and Aaron eventually goes wandering outside and finds nothing except, I guess, a ripped open trash bag. Well that explains it - Josef was a raccoon the whole time.

Well, no, he wasn’t, but it’s still not much worse than what actually happens. Aaron agrees to meet Josef out at this lake, and Josef sneaks up behind him in a goofy looking trench coat like a pedophile would wear and puts on the wolf mask to kill him with an ax. Aaron never sees him coming - he doesn’t even look behind him.

How do you not hear him? Did you have earbuds in, listening to the latest Marilyn Manson album? Were you just eyeing the beautiful sights?

Either he’s deaf, or he just wanted to die already and this was the best option - those are the only options. Him wanting to die actually makes the entire movie make much more sense.

Then Josef monologues about how Aaron was the greatest person ever because he always kept giving Josef second chances. No, I think that was just because he was a lobotomy patient who somehow escaped the hospital. Let's not get crazy here.

We also see that he’s apparently done this so many times that he can fill up a whole shelf full of all the tapes he’s taken.

Are you fucking kidding me? This guy did this THAT MANY TIMES? I just don’t get what he was doing right to kill so many people. For one, why didn’t he kill Aaron when Aaron came to his house the first time? Was that not his plan?

If not, that just raises more questions about all his previous victims. Did he have to lure all of them to his house, go through that whole story about having fake cancer and a fake wife, then follow them around for weeks until they finally just agree to let him kill them in a public place? Every single time? How were his victims ALL so abstractly stupid? The whole thing makes the Trinity Killer from Dexter look like a caveman bashing his enemies over the head with rocks to kill them. The odds required are astronomical - no, actually, “astronomical” still isn’t a big enough word.

Basically, he’s the most prolific serial killer alive, and given the movie’s story, characterizations and circumstances, that is insane on a level I am afraid to even begin to comprehend.

I hate to shit on this project that these guys were obviously extremely passionate about, and there are way worse movies overall, but come on. If you're gonna make a Craigslist horror movie, you didn't have to make up a story this silly. You could have just asked any random user what their worst real experience was, and made a movie of that.

Images copyright of their original owners; we own none of them.