johnlink ranks SIREN (2010)
Took a flier on this horror/thriller late one night via HBOGo. I can’t imagine anyone would actually seek this out by choice. Ever.
I watched SIREN (2010) on 11.14.15. It was my first viewing of the film.
This is a horror movie in which a trio of friends end up stranded on an island with a beautiful, mysterious stranger Silka (Tereza Srbová). It is clear, early on, that things are amiss. And by that, I mean with the movie and not just the plot. The opening sequence has a guy (Eoin Macken) picking up a hitchhiker in a tight dress (Anna Skellern). They flirt a bit, then end up in a dingy bathroom where he seduces her. It gets broken up when she thinks she sees a monstrous woman in the next stall.
But then, it turns out, that the hitchhiker and the guy are actually a young couple who are role playing. It feels like cheap sensationalism, and it is. This whole movie sort of works that way. It works really hard to be clever but manages to be trite and incoherent. There are several sexual encounter scenes which are teased, or started and not finished, or are lazily glossed over. But this isn’t a movie which uses sex as a plot point. This isn’t BASIC INSTINCT. Instead it is a movie which tosses a bit of seductive eye batting in every ten minutes to try and stay interesting. It doesn’t work so well.
Soon this couple ends up on a boat with the girl’s ex (Anthony Jabre). It’s a pretty silly love triangle. They all end up on this island where they run afoul of some guy, briefly, and then the aforementioned villainous. We spend most of this movie knowing something is about to happen, and various things do happen. Some are mildly scary, most are oversold. She is a monstrous siren, as the title tells us, and she wants them all dead. There is a lot of hallucination, plenty of blood, and a bunch of bland running around.
There isn’t much to say about this movie. It has a 3.6 on IMDB. I’ve seen plenty of worse movies with higher scores. It is not that SIREN is unwatchable or horrendous. It’s not good, not at all. It probably shouldn’t exist. It’s hard to sit through it at times. But, hey, it’s still better than something like THE HAPPENING.
SCORES
FILM: 4; MOVIE: 5; ACTING: 5; WRITING: 3
4+5+5+3+0=17
FINAL SCORE: 4.25 out of 10
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