The Criterion Channel Presents: The Lure (2015)

What happens when you combine a classic fairy tale with its own grim underpinnings and the wild and raucous style of a rock musical? Well you might get something that looks an awful lot like a rip-off of Agnieszka Smoczyńska’s The Lure, a 2015 dark reinterpretation of The Little Mermaid. The Polish horror-musical is about two mermaids, Golden (Michalina Olszańska) and Silver (Marta Mazurek) who become strippers at a nightclub in a coastal community, but are soon discovered. However rather than being rejected and persecuted by the humans, they are instead given the chance to form their own musical act, The Lure. While Silver falls in love with a human Mietek (Jakub Gierszal) despite the dangers of doing so, Golden begins feasting on random townsfolk. 

This is an eclectic and truly one-of-a-kind movie that’s unabashed weirdness is only equalled by its meaningful purpose. It’s quite a feminist take on the mermaid idea, from restoring the creatures’ mythological bloodlust and siren song, to de-sexualizing them, making a point of emphasizing their lack of human genitalia (and presence of aquatic sex organs instead) while still retaining the performance of eroticism. And though there’s no immediate hatred or mob rally against the mermaids, they aren’t accepted in society, very much othered by the people they come into contact with. But conforming to humanity is coded as deeply unnatural. As in The Little Mermaid, Silver tries to change her biology for her love, but to much more brutal and disastrous result. The visual effects and imagery of this transformation are vivid and horrifying, taking an already problematic message and exposing it for just how twisted it is. And yet the movie manages to pair this

darkness with some really vibrant and colourful musical numbers. I can’t speak for the songwriting of course, but the performers are good singers, the music is decent, and the staging where applicable is thoroughly energized and well-choreographed. And despite how disparate they may seem from the subject matter otherwise, they never distract or detract from the reality of the rest of the film. The Lure doesn’t need the campiness or comic element of other horror musicals like The Rocky Horror Picture Show or Little Shop of Horrors, it feels completely organic as is. With the spellbinding allure of the kind of fairy tale it’s inverting and the stylish direction and pace of a rock opera, with diversions into quite effective body horror and urban fantasy, The Lure is a bizarre, magnetic film of a kind all its own.

Criterion Recommendation: City of God (2002)

       Easily one of the most fascinating, intricate, and revelatory movies of the early 2000s, this story of Brazilian slum gangs based loosely on real events is one of the most strikingly intense crime films to come out of world cinema. Few movies better immerse you in an environment, and few movies better create a sense of claustrophobia in the chaos of that environment. A lot of that is owing to Fernando Meirelles’ superb direction, the exquisite cinematography and shot composition, and sharp, disorienting editing that gives the movie a near constant sense of urgency as it shifts focus between its multiple points of view. Powerful and unrelenting, City of God is more than just a political statement on gang warfare in Rio de Janiero’s disenfranchised communities, it’s a radical and bold exposé of the kind of underworld we’d rather not think about.

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