"We fell under the spell of this Siren's song."
Back in
2012, we reviewed the first movie in the
V/H/S (
HERE), which bears noting, because
Siren is the full-length adaptation of one of the segments in that first movie,
Amateur Night.
What is also of note is that the full-length effort actually came out better than its short-form predecessor did, which is usually not the case when shorts make the jump to feature length.
And it's not
Found Footage, which is absolutely a good thing.
Jonah and his 2 best friends hit the town for a bachelor party that he'll never forget, because alcohol, drugs, and strippers are pretty dawned memorable. After the first strip club they hit ends up being a bust, some random dude tells them about a really great, super secret place way out in the woods, where their wildest fantasies can some true. Since absolutely nothing about that setup sounds shady or dangerous, they follow the guy, because they're stupid.
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| DO THESE LOOK LIKE GUYS SMART ENOUGH TO RESIST SUCH A TEMPTING OFFER? |
Turns out the place is a brothel run by a devilish fellow named
Mr. Nyx, who promises to fulfill all of the guys fantasies and desires in exchange for their best memory. Thinking he's nuts, they agree, he takes their best memory from them (using voodoo or something), and then they begin to enjoy the sinful delights of the place.
 |
| "THANKS FOR THE MEMORIES, BOYS." |
Jonah ruins the night however by freeing a stripper who is locked up and tethered in a seedy backroom, which allows her to kill everyone (except for him, because she likes him), because she's the
Siren. They mate for life, you know, so needless to say
Jonah's wedding plans may be changing...
 |
| YEAH, YEAH, WE KNOW. YOU LIKE HIM. |
Director
Gregg Bishop, who gave us the underrated zombie flick
Dance of the Dead (
review HERE) takes his craft to another level with
Siren. It's funny, smartly-written, boasts a likeable cast playing likable (or at least tolerable) characters, and it offers plenty of nudity and gore to satisfy our baser likes.
Hannah Fierman does a great job of stretching the character of
Lily into something more than she was in the original short film. Sure she's terrifying, but the actress also makes her sympathetic and likable, which is no mean feat considering the character exists solely to lure men to their deaths.
Justin Welborn's Mr. Nyx was memorable as well, taking another character that we knew we should be scared of, and making him likable. It's really nice to see well-rounded characters in a flick like this for a change.
And if we're being honest, some of the cgi is a bit lackluster, but that's a minor annoyance, really.
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| THIS IS WHY YOU DON'T FALL IN LOVE WITH STRIPPERS. |
The
Siren definitely gets her bloody feed on in this one, and lots of people meet a gruesome end.
 |
| LIKE THIS GUY. |
Hannah Fierman, bless her heart, spends every second of her screen time buck naked. Now, it's not an overly-gratuitous kind of thing, but it can't have been easy to have been naked on set so much.
There are also plenty of other girls in various stages of undress throughout this one.
 |
| THOSE BOOTS... |
Way better than we expected it to be,
Siren ended up being one of the better genre movies that we saw in
2016. It's an entertaining effort for sure, and one that you should check out, especially if you liked the
Amateur Night segment in
V/H/S.
B+
Siren is available now on
VOD and
DVD.
She's only in the movie very briefly, but
Elyse Dufour is too fiery hot for us to ignore. Like seriously, more please.
Amateur Night in VHS was my favorite short and I wanted to see more of this. I loved Siren and thought it was the best horror film of 2016. It wasn't perfect by any means but damn was it entertaining.
ReplyDeleteDon't be mad when I say this out loud, Greer. But shit this was the slowest burner in a long time and when someone like You gives is a B-, I expect it to be quite good because let's be clear for true fans of horror, you got to dig deep, through the pile of crap that keeps coming at you. I found the acting to be missing and plot to be hollow. The only thing I did like was the fact that they didn't kill the creature in the end.. may be just may be one day it'll come back stronger. Cheers, keep up the good work.
ReplyDeleteThis was an entertaining movie but there were many flaws. The effects were sloppy many times that not even the darkness could hide it. I believe that the actrice wore a suit now and then because sometimes, when she moved, it looked like that. Or the effects were really crappy at those times. I wanted to see them having half breed babies but no such luck. Perhaps, not enough funds to create them.
ReplyDeleteGood for you, if you liked the characters but I didn't bought them. For me, they were rather stereotypes, two dimensional at best but nobody a whole package. Sorry to say this but I wouldn't mind everyone dying. Painfully, indeed. Them hurting the best pale, they TALKED about having hurt him really good but we didn't see a damned thing which is a shame. Even the kill of the big bad guy was nothing remarkable.
It would have been a lot better ending if it had been revealed that he had a second family in the basement.