Killer Mermaid (2014)

***CONTAINS SPOILERS***

Remember when I said that sometimes reviews just come to you and the creative juices flow naturally and other times it's not so easy? This is once again one of those times, but not because it's difficult to put into words what a film is about, or its style but purely because of how dull, uninteristing and tepid a film is. This is such a film unfortunately. Now having said all that, it's not as bad as it could have been and it does have Django in it. Django makes everything better right?

So our two fearless (or one maybe not so fearless) heroines (Kelly & Lucy) are invited to a Montenagro paradise by ones former boyfriend to catch up,drink, see the sea and generally have a merry ole time. You can probably see where this is going already. Upon arrival it is obvious that Boban (Micanovic) is still interested in Lucy (Burn) despite recently getting married. All formulaic stuff so far. Cue lots of rippled chests, girls showing off flesh and general pointless stuff. Oh and Kelly (Klebe) is afraid of the sea.

They eventually meet up with Boban's friend Alex (Stefanovic) who provides some measure of light relief. Unfortunately this goes on for far too long, an hour to be precise before anything really of note happens (barring a couple of fish hook gutting murder scenes). Character development is good. Dragging it out for over an hour before we even see what the film is about, is not so good. Goofing around and wearing bikinis no matter how pretty you all may be for a good film does not make. Anyway they eventually decide to go to the small island of Mamula (the films original title) where things start picking up.

Overall this is not a great film and while production values are reasonable for this type of stuff, the script and drawn out story let it down badly. That said, everyones acting is above par with people who have been in much better stuff before. Kind of makes one wonder how they were all actually convinced to apear in this one. By all accounts Nero was very difficult to convince, and while his presence lends the film a lot of credibility and professionalism, maybe it would have been better to spend those resources elsewhere. But it's Django, and he's always cool so I can see why they wanted him.

The dialogue is stilted at times but this can be forgiven. The scenery is fantastic and it really is a beautiful part of the world. For a low budget Serbian production it exceeds probabal expectations with just one notable exception. The killer mermaid herself. She has far too little screen time, but when she is on screen the effects are very well done, some slightly dodgy cgi aside. Zorana Kostic Obradovic is beautiful and beguiling at the same time and it is a real shame more was made of character development and leading up to the finale, than of her herself (given the film is about a mermaid after all).

Notable mention must also be given to Mina Sablic as the actual creature herself. The effects and make up applied to her are actually quite good in all fairness. Franco Nero is also his usual awesome self, with a couple of great (if not cheesy) monologues for him to gruff and grizzle out. Not the worse film I ever seen, far from it but watch this with very low expectations and it should entertain enough for its runtime. Recommended only for Nero and Obradovic.