The Lure

2015 Polish horror musical

Rating: 15/20

Plot: Mermaid sisters join a family pop bar band. One falls in love with the son while the other develops a thirst for blood. Lots of singing and nudity!

Beautiful, ugly art here with the only Polish horror musical I believe I've ever seen. There's some yucky stuff on display in this Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale retelling. Maybe it's not as yucky as the Disney version since that filth is intended for young children while this one obviously is intended for inhabitants of Poland. Everybody knows that Poland doesn't have children. It starts with the disturbing nudity and those mermaid tails. As my faithful readers know, I'm a fan of nudity, especially female nudity. However, the characters in this one are naked way too much, and since they're supposed to be very young, I started feeling like a Republican running for Congress or something. Additionally, the naked mermaids--both played by actresses in their 20s, I would like to note--don't display all the parts women are supposed to have. I should explain that they do have legs at times in this movie. But they've been CGI-scrubbed (or have some sort of prosthetic) to give them the genitalia of Barbie dolls.

More disturbing are those tails. I'm sure this blog entry, like my The Little Mermaid post, will attract some gentlemen looking for a mermaid fetish website because we all know that exists. I'm willing to bet that not many of them would find much of this arousing, although there is some extended lesbian action and, as I said, a great deal of nudity. Those tails, instead of being the normal almost-cute appendages that one could think have a sexy novelty, look like bloated green eels. Created with a mix of mechanics and computer effects, they're monstrously intimidating bulbous things that I wouldn't want to fondle. Heck, I don't even want to pet the tiny sharks at the Indianapolis Zoo.

There are liberties taken with the Andersen story, as you'd imagine. There's a feminist angle to The Lure (the lovely-sounding Corki Dancingu in Poland) though it's not in any kind of empowering way. Instead, it's got a much darker feminist message. As with movies with similar aesthetics, like Under the Skin and Neon Demon, the lurid florescent colors and 1980's decor feel like the perfect colors for that sort of message. 

Despite a pattern with how a lot of the songs started in this movie (a personal nitpick that others might not even notice), I really liked the songs in this. There's one giant musical dance number that takes place in a shopping mall, but most of the musical bits, provided by that family band which is actually a real band, seems like musical videos. They're interesting neo-new-wave numbers, sinister and catchy. They're not the traditional songs you'd expect to hear in a musical, maybe more in a rock opera. I doubt everybody would enjoy them, especially after hearing so many of the tracks, but as a child of the 80s, the nostalgia got me.

This isn't a horror movie because it's scary, but it does contain a lot of horrifying imagery. And I'm not just talking about that extended shot where we get a tour of the sleazy cabaret where about half of the action takes place. This isn't an adult fairy tale that is afraid to show the bloody bits. There are surgery scars, chomped jugulars, and devoured thumbs. There's a lovely and grotesque transplant scene that, along with a touching song that is more touching if you really think about the context, is just so stunning and weird. And if the part of mermaids that turn you pervs on happen to be their curvy fangs, you're in luck because those chompers are on full display in a lot of scenes.

It's not for everybody, but those of you who got a little excited when you read the words "Polish mermaid horror musical" should check it out.