Siren

Directed by: Andrew Hull

Starring: Eoin Macken, Anna Skellern, Tereza Srbova, Anthony Jabre

Synopsis:

Hoping to escape their busy city lives for a weekend of sailing off Tunisia’s Mediterranean coast, Ken (Macken), his girlfriend Rachel (Skellern) and her old college friend Marco (Jabre) see their plans hit a snag when they go to the aid of a castaway. Raving incoherently and bleeding from his ears, the man dies on board the boat prompting the three friends, fearing reprisals from the local foreign authorities, to take his body to a nearby deserted island for a surreptitious burial.

On the island they discover another castaway, a beautiful but clearly traumatized young woman named Silka (Srbova). Rachel becomes immediately entranced by the girl, while Ken and Marco’s obvious interests in her lead to a deep sexual frustration that begins to manifest itself in the form of feverish hallucinations, violence and extreme paranoia. As the tensions between the three friends rise towards a deadly boiling point, they make a chilling discovery that suggests they may not make it off the island alive.

Review:

While Siren manages to be a pretty decent psychological horror that updates the Greek myth of a supernatural being luring sailors to their doom, it is a little unfortunate that the opening 5 minutes outshines everything that comes afterwards.

At a sun-bleached, desolate crossroads, a beautiful young woman in a red dress is trying to hitch a lift. A car horn sounds – there’s a man in a BMW who’s stopped... This whole sequence is very well shot and edited and does a good job of playing with our expectations.

The main problem with Siren is that, after that initial sequence, when the main characters get on their yacht(named Persephone, an ancient Greek Goddess who had nothing to do with the myth of the Sirens), everything happens exactly as you would expect – mostly.Rachel, Ken and Marco encounter a man trying to escape from an island, who inexplicably dies shortly after boarding their boat.

When the three take his body ashore, they encounter a woman, Silka, who purports to be amnesiac. Rachel takes her under her wing while the two men look on with lust slowly coursing through their veins. Rachel meanwhile starts to have short flashes of visions which hint at Silka’s true nature.

During a drunken evening around the campfire, Silka sings them a song (Elephants, by a band called Warpaint for those who are interested). Hearing the song alters both Ken and Marco’s hold on reality and they both enter a nightmarish dreamscape that they never fully wake up from.

These nightmare scenes are really well done and help build upon the tension between the trio – Marco clearly still carries a torch for Rachel, and Ken is very wary of that. Silka has already been pushing their buttons and the nightmares compound it.

Even so, things don’t pan out as you’d expect from that scenario and things don’t really get bloody until the final confrontation. The film relies on a sense of unease and dread, and as it draws back the curtain for the audience to see the true nature of their plight, you get a sense of futility in their situation, killing all hope.

There are times when the dialogue gets in the way, and sounds a bit too b-movie cliché (confronting Silka with the usual “just who are you!” kind of lines). Luckily the actors themselves manage to make the dialogue work for the most part. The cinematography is superb, and the film makes the most of it’s Mediterranean setting.

Verdict:

There is a trend in marketing at the moment of designing a dvd cover which over-exaggerates the film’s content. This is one of those occasions. If you happen to pick this up off the shelf, don’t be misled – Siren isn’t a gory slasher movie featuring bloodied girls in bikinis. Instead it’s a well made psychological thriller. Also,hats off for the most visually striking title sequence I've seen in awhile.

7 out of 10 (MikeOutWest)