FROM THE ORIGINAL CINEMASTERS ARCHIVE
The preamble to this film is that it's another one firmly in the category I have affectionately dubbed the completely bonkers. When I was looking over the list I had a few in mind but this is one I knew made the list because the trailer really pulled me in. The cast is pretty stacked with familiar faces and the overall tone had that delightfully skewed indie vibe that made it seem like it would provide an interesting respite from the standard horror fare I have to sift through this time of year. To borrow from another classic Disney animated wonder, this is a tale as old as time. Well, at least if you've lived in Florida your whole life. Then it's just another day in the Sunshine State, nearly taking your own life and discovering a mermaid you have some kind of otherworldly, thankfully non-sexual, chemistry with and finding a renewed zest for life. That would be how Pemberton played his role as Doug at least. So lets get into what went right before we discuss the alternative.
As I said, the cast is what drew me to this film. There were just enough fun little nods to players I was familiar with that I wanted to take a peek at what they put together. As I've mentioned more than once now, Johnny Pemberton is our main character, Doug. He's a loser who hooked up with a girl one time and ended up with a daughter. He's not a bad dad. But he's not a good dad either, really. He's just sort of there. Doug is barely making it through life and that's with a fair amount of assistance from illicit substances as it stands. So he's not batting a thousand in general. He's the guy who takes care of a ridiculously large fish tank in a special VIP room at a terribly seedy strip club. I can't even really bring myself to dub it a gentleman's club because it just isn't. But his services are no longer needed with Kirk Fox, aka "Sewage Joe" for my Parks and Rec fans out there, giving old Doug the axe early on in the film. Kevin Nealon plays the wealthy and very sympathetically benevolent step dad to Doug's daughter. Not a huge role but I always love seeing Nealon in anything and he was more than capable in his role. Honestly, I would have loved if they gave him a little more room to move about freely with the character as Kevin's improv skills are matched by very few.
The other familiar faces in the peanut gallery were Kevin Dunn, known for sarcastic and annoying supporting characters, often a very disapproving father figure ala Small Soldiers and the early Transformer films with Shia LaBeouf, and the increasingly unhinged Robert Patrick. Now T-1000 can still clean up nicely when he wants, but he's also settled quite comfortably into his own version of Christopher Walken's second act comedic career. He's our main antagonist and the hair and leathered Floridian skin are enough to make you stare in disbelief. His cohort and son is played by Tyler Rice, whom I did not know prior to this film but his shining achievement thus far according to IMDb is a film called "Butt Boy". He played a disappointing son quite nicely in this film and meets a very fitting end when the time comes. I know these aren't all A-List celebrities. This wasn't a fun in the sun take on an Ocean's 11 movie with a star studded cast. But from the trailer and the players involved, I was happy to take a look at this film. Oh yeah, and don't let me forget the cherry on top. There's a throw away cold open to the film with none other than Tom Arnold. If that wasn't a way to start this flick off right, I don't know what is.
This movie feels a little like the product of a romantic encounter between "The Shape of Water", the Temu version of "True Romance" and a dash of "Weekend at Bernie's" thrown in the mix. It feels a little like when you see the donut bacon double cheeseburger at the state fair. You know from 100 yards out that it's not going to be any kind of good for you. The tension in your chest as your blood begins coagulating prematurely is a sign you probably should stay far away. But something propels you towards it and in the end, the burger is it's own kind of delicious dunked in glazed shame. I can't pretend like this movie is any kind of good. I enjoyed parts of it. It wasn't anywhere near as much of a let down as so many other films I've watched over the years while trapsing through October willy nilly. I do thank the filmmakers that they took a page out of the recoil from a forbidden fish love that Shape of Water fully embraced. That would have probably gone too far. Had this been a Troma of Full Moon picture, I'm certain there would have been a far more graphic and stomach churning angle to incorporate a physical relationship. But this one seemed primarily born out of need for a companion. While he does dress up the female mermaid, which I know is a bit redundant but that means I have to allow for merman to enter the vernacular and that feels even more odd, as a lady and parade her around as a girlfriend, the true intention is simply to allow her to accompany him to his daughter's birthday party, which quickly devolves into a slow motion nightmare of the best variety.
I think that's really the saving grace of this whole film so many times over. It's the fact that it doesn't fully lean into the ridiculousness as a tongue-in-cheek spoof of some sort but it embraces the silliness while still attempting to pass it off as a deliberate narrative, which I do believe the film asserts is the case. The story is very intentional and it's not simply played for absurd laughs. There's an attempt at a sweetness that it does not hit. The desperation and overall moral vacuum do not allow for a sentimental tone to ever fully take shape. But there are elements of softer tones here and there. There's a squinting nobility to Doug's motivation at times. He's a lovable loser here and there. It's almost the ying to the yang of something like a Sharknado. Where that movie entirely indulges itself in gratuitous violence, eye rolling one liners, and extensive desperate but fun cameos, this movie takes similar strides while still very much trying to be a cohesive story with a point and direction. So I do have to give it credit for establishing an entirely nonsensical plot but having the wherewithal to take it as serious as it can, which I think works in it's favor in the end.
I feel like I've married the good and the bad together rather well thus far. The far fetched nature of the whole film makes it fun but it also detracts. It's montage heavy in an attempt to circumvent actually establishing real structure but it works well enough. It's not as far as a Bill and Ted bootstrap paradox where the keys exist where they are because they said they'd come back later and put them there, but you kind of look the other way while the film is trying to trick you into thinking it's presenting you with serious characters undergoing some kind of sincere development. They hint at some kind of underlying connection between Doug and his mermaid compatriot at the end, but again, thankfully they fade to black before anything becomes overtly physical. So I'm not going to rag on any one thing that much because all the things I did actually enjoy about this movie were the same things that made it into it's own kind of train wreck to watch. It worked and it didn't at the exact same time. It wasn't some weird cerebral kind of summation at the end where you're unsure if you liked it or not. I enjoyed the parts I did and I didn't enjoy the rest of it. I think what happened, though, was that the two sides found a way to almost perfectly balance each other out somehow.
As the movie was coming to a close, I kept trying to decide if it was a C+ or a B- kind of movie. The lines are a lot blurry on those for me at times like this. I think ultimately I had to go C+ because it felt like it fit better and I don't think I could really take myself seriously if I put this movie in the B category, even with the caveat of a minus after it. It's a fun, weird watch. As the movie establishes up front, it's a kind of love letter to Florida via a fantastically crazy film and that really kind of fits. It's made well and the acting is fairly competent from a cast that's comprised of known but lesser names and faces. It was a fun take on a horror movie that sort of works it's way around a number of genres. There's some comedy. There's a bit of drama. There's some action and adventure. In the end, it's got enough wild carnage to definitely fall under the header of horror and there's no confusing out aquatic female lead for the pleasant aesthetic of an Ariel from under the sea. This was a creature feature all the way. I think I can only recommend this movie under the conditions I've laid out already. If this sounds like it could be fun to you, check out the trailer. If that crosses the t's and dots the lower case j's for you, then pop this one on and have a bit of fun. It's new, it's well made and there are some truly fun elements to it. It might not be quite as high of a note as I wanted to hit rounding out the first week of the 31 days but I'm not sitting here angry at some asinine slasher film that I've spent 90 minutes quietly yelling at the screen and cheering for a killer since the cast are all useless idiots. I'll take that any day of the week. Now all we have is to close this one out and see what day 8 has in store for us. So until that time, I'll catch you on the flip side.
WHERE TO WATCH
