You know, I feel like this has been one of the better quality Horrortoberfests so far. Aside from a few outliers, nothing has been overtly horrendous this year and certainly not to the same consistent degree as other years. That, my friends, is why I chose today’s movie based on the fact that it is a low rated, Serbian, horror movie with the title Killer Mermaid. I’ve had it too easy and I need to sink back into the muck of shitty horror where I belong.

From the title of the movie, you might think that this is about a murderous mermaid. A mermurderer if you will. You would be sadly mistaken, however, as this movie is actually mostly about an old dude that runs around with crazy unwieldly weapon killing people. The titular mermaid doesn’t even make an appearance until the last third of the movie and by that point at least half the main cast has already been killed off. Oh, right, summation. Lucy and Kelly are on vacation to visit an old college friend from Serbia, Alex. Despite warnings from a local kooky fisherman, they go to check out an island that used to be a prison but now hosts a terrible secret. That secret is a mermaid.

I’ll go ahead and say that I was at least pleased that the film was set in Serbia and not just having everyone try to do their worst American accents. For what was obviously a fairly low budget film, the actors managed to not come off as people that failed out of the local improv troupe. Though they shoehorned in some random subplot about Lucy and Alex hooking up even though he is engaged to another woman that goes nowhere and has no bearing on the plot at all. Like, the fiancé doesn’t even find out and the fact that it happened affects none of the choices made. For all the difference it made to the plot, they may as well have had a subplot about how Alex really doesn’t like apples even though his fiancé keeps buying them.

They also inexplicably decided to go with some seriously terrible CGI for the mermaid. When she is human-form and you only see the top half, it’s just some woman and that’s fine. When she is in monster-form, it is some super janky CG and even her tail when in human form is done in CG for no reason. Also, just personal taste here, the tail is flesh colored which I understand makes it look more like it’s just a weird part of the body instead of that half and half look but it just didn’t work for me. As mentioned, the distinct lack of mermaid menace in the film was also noticeable since this could have easily have just been a crappy slasher flick if you turned it off like 30 minutes before it ended.

In all this wasn’t nearly as bad as I was hoping/fearing. While most assuredly not a polished Hollywood movie, it does have the basics down for the most part. I’d give the movie a 2 out of 5 if for nothing else than reminding me of this.

Favorite part of the movie: Starts out with random Euro techno song for the credits. Then opening scene. Then immediately has the same techno song for the next scene. They paid for it and they’ll be damned if they aren’t going to use it.

Least favorite part: Kooky fisherman straight up quotes Moby Dick and I will give you 1 guess as to which line.