An attractive woman with large breastesses and a bewildered look on her face accepts a ride from a stranger, but when they pull over to a creepily unkempt reststop her attempt to urinate through her constant confusion is interrupted by the man’s desire for doggie style coupling. Why she would choose to pee through her confusion instead of her urethra is anyone’s guess.
Come to find out they’re a couple just playing a game inspired by the opening of When A Man Loves A Woman starring Andy Garcia and Meg Ryan. It’s a solid romantic drama, you should check it out if you get the chance. Anyway, Ken and Rachel meet up with a third friend, the fur covered Marco, and they all head out for an afternoon of sailing and fornication. Well Marco will be missing out on the fornicating goodness, but he does get to steer the boat.
Unfortunately he steers it right into the shallows when he spots an even furrier man dragging himself through the water, and soon the three friends are trapped with a broken boat, a dead stranger, and a mystery woman who sings a dangerous song drawing them all to their doom! And by ‘doom’ I of course mean hallucinations, acts of supreme idiocy, and a little skinny dipping. Oh, and murder.
Kills
The film features a very small cast so the pool of potential victims is pretty shallow, but in addition to a couple dead strangers we do get to see the mystery lady kill folks not-so softly with her song.
Ills
A dead guy with a graphically severed leg is seen taking a dirt nap, a man’s eardrums bleed out on him, and there is a total disregard for sharp objects.
Lust
There are two early scenes featuring hip thrusting into lady parts including one couple going to town in a dirty restroom and another christening a new sailboat’s dining table with their sweaty coupling. And all we get for our troubles is a guy’s bare ass. The tease continues when MAIN takes a nudity-free shower and when the mystery woman removes her shirt to seduce Marco and again we, the loyal viewers, see nothing but her naked back.
But it pays off when the two hot ladies strip down and walk slowly into the ocean while their round, clearly edible asses sway side to side in mesmerizing fashion. (That’s edible in the figurative sense by the way… not in the way Robert Fure would have meant it.)
Learning
There are quite a few lessons to be found here, but clearly the most important one is that women shouldn’t be allowed on boats.
Review
Simply put, anything potentially worthwhile about this flick got lost somewhere between concept and execution. An exotic locale, hot women in little to no clothing, one or more of those hot women killing other people, potential lesbian hook-ups, supernatural/Greek-themed storyline, a big ass fucking knife… these are all things the DVD art and the film’s description led me to believe could be found in Siren. They’re also pretty much all lies.
The film’s setup is fine in its simplicity. Three friends out on a boat trip means one of them (Marco) is a third wheel and perfectly suited to add to the dramatic conflict, but aside from a brief bit where Ken questions the furry guy’s motivations very little is made of it. Luckily Ken is enough of a dick that he doesn’t really need any motivation to fuel his douchiness. He’s even perturbed when the stranger kills himself on the deck of their boat.
The action, such as it is, starts once they choose to bury the guy on the nearby island. The mysterious woman appears and she does what we know by the title she’s destined to do… draw them each to their unfortunate demise. The problem once again is in the execution. We know the legend of the sirens and that they lull unlucky seafarers in with the sultry and alluring sound of their voice, but the film still feels compelled to slowly dole out the “suspense” as to her character… is she evil? Or a victim? Who knows?!
We do.
From there it’s just a very slow countdown to the inevitable as the three start having dreams and visions of very bad things. These dreams make little sense, but they do feature the film’s only real bloody bits. More of that spread throughout the “real world” would have served the story better, especially as it fails in the other promised arena as well… sex and nudity. A beautiful woman who seduces people to death, two bouts of sex, a shower, and a skinny dipping scene, and all we get is some bare butts? Granted, they’re damn fine behinds, but for a film that seemingly promised sexy horror it’s ridiculously light on both.
There’s plenty more I could rail against here, but the film ends with an onscreen “In memoriam” for the director, Andrew Hull, who died last year. So he doesn’t need any more grief.
Siren is currently available on DVD. Do not heed its call.
