Siren

It's hard to believe that any film can get so much so wrong all at once.

Siren has no major stars in it and is a self-confessed horror film. Therefore, the best the film-makers were probably hoping for was that it attained a cult following on DVD. I doubt it will.

For a start the cover is misleading. It shows three bikini-clad women's bodies on the front. There are only two women in the whole movie (and only one ever wears a bikini slightly near the end of the film). Secondly, the tagline describes the film as 'The best supernatural thriller since Dead Calm.' First of all Dead Calm was released over twenty years ago and it wasn't supernatural. The only similarity is that both films have boats in them.

Then we have the film itself: three of the most unlikeable people in the world take a boat trip and end up getting stuck on an island with - you guessed it - a siren. Despite not heeding the obligatory warning from the clichéd old geezer at the boating station about sailing too close to the rock and getting caught by supernatural beings, they do it anyway. Do we care? Probably not by now as we're so sick of watching these people.

Anyone hoping for vague titillation will be disappointed. You see two women naked from the back and they kiss a couple of times. No nudity. Not even lots of bikini-clad women.

The horror. There isn't much. There's hardly any in the film at all. When it tries to be scary about three quarters of the way through, it just feels confusing.

It's one plus point - it was short. However, the 1 hr 16 minutes felt a lot longer than it actually way! Just don't bother with this one.

the only thing, that is really horrifying is the dialogs. people constantly shouting their names, nonstop looking for each other. nothing happens in this movie but the waste of time. after 20 minutes, you think: »please, get killed. now! o my gosh, it's another 60 minutes left.«

if someone is interested in mythology, i recommend homers odyssee as a book. this movie isn't even a modern interpretation of it. everything is superficial. no connection but the idea of people who got influenced by the singing of sirens. in the myth it's not only one siren and they sing to get seamen to shipwreck. here, the reason is different. in fact, the movie combines the myth of sirens with the myth of circe. that's, why the siren's name is silka, 'cause it sounds like, without meaning it. in the odyssee these are completely different stories. this is just senseless eclecticism. poorly made.

Do not get suckered in by the alluring movie cover, because it is really nothing that you see in the movie at all. And worst of all, that movie cover does send a wrong signal about what you will see in the movie.

The movie "Siren" is a story about 3 people getting stranded on a small island when their boat breaks down and runs ashore. Here they encounter the sensual and mysterious Silka. But something is not entirely right on the island...

"Siren" does have an interesting take on the whole siren mythology and it is interesting enough, just a shame that the rest of the movie was so bad. The story trots forward in a slow, dull pace with nothing much happening. And at times it is great, because you want to know what will happen next, but at other times it is frustrating, because you feel you are getting nowhere in way too long a time.

Having a small cast was working well for the movie though, because you get more involved with each character, but sadly there were very little character evolving throughout the movie. You never really fully did get into whom they were and why they acted the way they did.

One thing that did work for the movie, was the singing. When Silka was singing it did sound really interesting and chilling in a way. It sort of made you tinkle and the song went to your soul (if one does believe that we have souls). So thumbs up for the impressive sound here.

One thing that really ticked me off was the excessive display of semi-erotic scenes. Why did we see almost everyone making out with almost everyone? And why were there so many girl on girl scenes? It totally brought the movie down to a low-grade, low-ranked sleazy level. And this was what killed off the movie for me, the final death throe.

The genre is labeled as horror, but I wouldn't hardly call "Siren" a horror movie. It is more of a suspense movie, because nothing scary is happening throughout the entire movie.

I was disappointed with the overall movie experience, as I had expected at least something more than what it turned out to be; a sad excuse to show women kissing each other!

An excellent setup, nice idea but completely wasted in bad acting, bad directing and scripting.

You know, if you are going to make a sexy horror movie you have to go all the way. I mean, why selling sex with the cover, why select the players so obviously by their looks, if you are not going to show a thing.

On the other hand maybe you could have pull it off as a more serious horror movie with better actors. But not showing the sex scenes between the characters, specially the lesbian scene, is not having any sense of business at all.

In the end, be clear of what kind of movie you want to make and try to make the better movie you can of the genre...

Such a waste...

It's not often you get a modern horror film with its origins in Greek myth, but SIREN is such a movie. Sadly, it wastes the potential of that premise with a storyline that turns out to stick to its low budget origins in a film that features plenty of tease and very little in the way of action or incident.

I don't mind mood pieces that focus on brooding atmosphere but there's none of that either. Where SIREN does succeed is in creating a sufficiently exotic locale for the action - this British movie was shot in Tunisia and it looks great. The twentysomething cast don't have much opportunity to shine given the vagueness of their characters, and when the supernatural aspects of the storyline finally show up they're dealt with in the most ordinary way imaginable.

Where I do have to praise the film is in the performance of lead actress Anna Skellern. She starts off being treated in purely physical terms as a Kelly Brook-style voluptuous figure, but by the end she's shown previously unimagined depths of fragility and determination. Skellern is very good, the single stand out in what is a generally lacklustre movie.