SiREN (Movie Review)

The road to horror is paved with the terrible decision making of often less than intellegent characters. In the case of SiREN (the V/H/S spinoff spawned from the the "Amateur Night" segment) it's a bunch of dude bros out for a night of debauchery during a bachelor party. Drinking at a seedy strip club leads to shrooms which leads to these geniuses following a complete stranger to the middle of nowhere with the promise they will have the time of their lives...what could possibly go wrong?

Now when the four fine lads get to this "mind blowing" establishment anyone else in their right mind would take their ball and go home. These guys stick around for some shady "Let's Make a Deal" payment negotiations, leech garnished cocktails and some good ol' fashioned S&M entertainment. To top it all off, the bachelor finds a girl locked up in a room and being the good guy he is, decides to break her free. Turns out this girl was locked up for a reason and let's just say it's not because of her gentle moves in the bedroom.  

Dueling tones quickly become SiREN's Achilles heel. Gregg Bishop's main characters plow their way through cringe worthy dude bro dialogue and jokes which create a somewhat tongue-in-cheek B-movie vibe, which is much closer to what this flick is. However, there are some darker elements at play which are a bit disarming when other more fantastical elements crop up and lead to some unintentional laughs.

For some movies, the weirder things get the better and more irreverent it all feels. SiREN definitely brings the weird, but never quite feels like it "earns it." David Bruckner's "Amateur Night" felt somewhat grounded right up until it's supernatural turn whereas SiREN comes out of the gate a little left of center. Expanding the V/H/S short was a stretch to begin with, but Bishop manages skid along with just enough mixture of quirk and horror to satisfy without innovating within the creature feature genre. 

Hannah Fierman reprises her role from "Amateur Night" delivering various stilted variations of simplistic language- as a mystical creature might. Fierman is at her best using her hypnotizing eyes in a seductive and terrifying way- a feat considering she spends most of the film in the buff. Богатый опыт у девушек по вызову не может сформироваться за несколько месяцев, потому серьезные мужчины часто выбирают взрослых проституток , которые перепробовали много поз, нестандартных сексуальных утех, и сама поделиться своими знаниями с клиентами! Yet there's no anchoring performance to hang your hat on here, leaving Bishop to lean on whatever filmmaking tricks he's got up how sleeve and aside from an impressive diner sequence boasting muted sound from the perspective of a character wearing iPhone headphones, there isn't much else that's visually or viscerally thrilling. 

Who can truly say for certain if this particular concept was better left as is in the frames of V/H/S. There's nothing wrong with a little bit of curious exploration when it comes to an idea such as this, but SiREN ventures a bit too far with its playful game of "just the tip"- both figuratively and literally at one point. There are a few intriguing concepts at play and Fierman's enticing bedroom eyes will lure you well into the film's last act- but watch out for that tail.