Heading out to sea, a group of travelers find themselves shipwrecked after a storm and get rescued by a military research vessel operating out of a decommissioned battleship, but when they realize the ship was experimenting on mermaids must stop the creatures and get off alive.
This was a pretty decent enough creature feature. Among the better elements here is the main setup that manages to create an overall intriguing idea of the group getting stranded at sea and coming across the creature. With the group going on their trip to have some fun and explore being at sea together, the ensuing storm that gets them shipwrecked and stranded is a fun idea in concept as well as action, with the low-budget means of accomplishing this getting quite fun at times. Likewise, the ensuing storyline about the investigation into the cause and purpose of the transformation of the mermaids before they get loose and infest the ship is a fantastic idea, creating a fun storyline exploring this with the group arriving on the abandoned boat trying to figure out what happened to everyone onboard. That leads into the solid series of cheesy creature attacks involving the mermaids and other beings getting to overwhelm the group. With the first instances of something happening being the strange plant life found along the ship and the aftermath of the experiments left behind, it paints a solid idea of the fun to be had later on when they start getting attacked by the main creatures. The slew of attacks by the creatures in the bowels of the ship, where the group tries to get the necessary equipment to save their transforming friend, which has several fun encounters throughout the ship involving the different creatures and different powers to try to catch them, preventing their escape attempts. As this is mostly full of cheesy effects, a nice scattering of gore, and a fun conclusion, there are some likable aspects in here to end this rather nicely. There are some issues with this one that hold it back. The main flaw of the film is the generally confusing and lacking sense of context for what's going on. There's not much in the explanation for anything happening here, from how the group gets stranded at sea, why they split up to board the ship, or how the experiment works with examples made involving rapid or slow-changing metamorphosis for infected persons, depending on who's being targeted. As far too much of the film's running time is spent on the needless banter between the group trying to get to the bottom of their situation or coercing others to do the right thing, this one never develops the necessary connections needed to tie all the bizarre connections together all that well. Since it's also due to the overwhelming low budget nature of everything that permeates the effects, the production, and the general atmosphere of everything, it all comes together to lower this one overall.
Rated Unrated/R: Graphic Language and Graphic Violence.
