The Horror Show
Killer Mermaid AKA Mamula/Nymph
by Milan Todorovic
Watching Killer Mermaid was nothing but frustration for me, granted it wasn’t the movie’s fault, that doesn’t mean it was good. I blame Comcast, the internet was soooooo slow, trying to watch a streaming movie was virtually impossible. Every five minutes the movie would have to buffer. It’s actually interesting that years ago, before streaming was a thing, people would purchase movies. They would purchase these movies and watch them seamlessly, providing the film didn’t get damaged. I almost never purchase movies now. Granted, I have a wider selection at my fingertips. I may lose quality and sometimes it may be unstreamable but how else would I discover crappy movies such as the aforementioned Killer Mermaid?
Kelly and Lucy, two American friends, travel together to Europe on vacation. They stay with their old college friend, Alex, and his fiancé, Yasmin. A love triangle develops between Lucy, Alex, and Yasmin. Yasmin, jealous, questions Lucy and Alex’s history revealing that they were more than just friends. The old spark between Lucy and Alex rekindles one night. The four travel to an abandoned subway tunnel where they run into Yasmin’s friend Boban. Together, the group decides to travel to the old prison island Mamula. Mamula has a dark past, besides being a former Nazi base, it also houses a serial killer. This weathered old killer feeds his victims to a mermaid, and not the elegant beautiful creatures featured in Disney, but rather bloodthirsty predators luring men to their doom. The killer literally intends to feed Kelly and the others to the fishes.
I really wish I had positive things to say here, but I honestly can’t think of any. This is painfully obviously a Serbian film, not to be confused with A Serbian Film, but instead a film from Serbia. Half the cast is European, I’m fine with that. It’s just not always easy for actors with thick accents to play American characters (I’m looking at you, Lucy). I could clearly hear her accent despite how much she tried to cover it. Then, there is the dialogue. The English dialogue just seemed overworked. It was probably because most of the writers were also Serbian. If you want English dialogue, hire an English writer, and same for Serbian. For example, if you were a non-native-English-speaker trying to say, “I’m sitting on a bomb,” you may end up writing a line like, “I feel like I’m sitting on an atomic bomb ready to explode.” Props if you get the reference, but seriously which sounds more believable?
My second biggest problem is that Killer Mermaid, also had trouble keeping continuity and plot and unresolved plot-lines. The biggest continuity error centers on Kelly’s in-ability to swim. Kelly, Lucy, and Alex were all great friends in college right? Then how did Alex never know that Kelly’s brother drowned and she was too afraid to swim after that? I’ll tell you why, the writers needed to explain it to the audience. However, we have two outsiders who could have been used to explain her fear. If they used either Yasmin or Boban, then there would have been no continuity error. As for unresolved plotlines, you have the love triangle between Yasmin, Lucy, and Alex. The history between Lucy and Alex creates tension within Alex and Lucy’s relationship. After Lucy and Alex have their little “slip-up,” Kelly mentions to Lucy how stupid it was but it’s never mentioned again. There is zero resolution, and it’s frustrating. We don’t have a dynamic character conflict because of the situation or anything! This is not the only instance of unresolved plotlines in this movie.
The worst though is that this is a movie called Killer Mermaid in the international releases but also known as Nymph and Mamula, but the mermaid is barely in the movie. I think she makes her first appearance roughly halfway through the movie, but still. She kills just as many people as the serial killer. In a movie about a killer mermaid, I want to see a mermaid kill tons of people, not just three. However, mermaids aren’t very threatening on land. I guess they had to create some sort of threat to put the group in danger while on land.
Even with all that, I could forgive the movie if it was just entertaining. There is nothing worse than a boring movie. When I watched Killer Mermaid I expected it to be loaded with tons of crazy kills. There was one badass decapitation, but other than that, there were a couple of drownings. Talk about the most boring way to die in a movie. The only positive thing this movie did was that it actually filmed on location. They filmed in Mamula because it’s a real place. Not many films do that anymore, they either film in a place that looks like the intended location or use CGI. It’s actually quite cool that the filmmakers took that extra step to film on location, it adds a new layer of believability. But it’s sad that that was the only positive thing this movie did.
Some people say, “There’s always a silver lining.” I don’t, I say, “Move on.” There are better movies out there, ones that are worth both my time and yours. This movie just left me dead in the water, even with streaming. Considering the wide amount of movies available to me, was it worth it? I love crappy movies, but the so-bad-they’re-good kind. This was just bad. Crappy. So short answer, no. Just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should. Also, if your internet ever goes out, how will you watch movies? Remember this, DVDs still play when the internet sucks.
Billy Wayne Martin, HMS
The Horror Show Menu.