We’re ending Monster Week with a film that is based around a more classic monster than the ones I’ve reviewed this week. Although, technically, this isn’t strictly a movie about the standard Siren of mythology. If you’ve ever seen the original V/H/S anthology movie, then you’ll already be familiar with the monster from this movie. More of a cross between a succubus and a siren, really. They took the base premise from that short and stretched it out into a feature length film.

Jonah is going to be getting married and, like so many other horror movies before, his groomsmen plan to take him out for a night he will never forget. When the strip club they go to ends up being kind of a bust (haHA busty), they get told about an exclusive, underground club where you can get anything you want. When Jonah thinks that one of the girls is being locked up against her will (which, you know, is true), he releases her but finds out that there’s a lot more to her than he imagined. Now they’ve got a powerful monster and a vengeful club owner after them and it’s not clear which one of those two is worse.

The monster here and in the original short is played to perfection by Hannah Fierman. Just naturally she has some exaggerated features like large eyes and sharp cheek bones that lend to a otherworldliness even before the monster transformation. With this, unlike the short, she gets a lot more screen time and ability to get the character across. Her backstory is essentially supernatural sex trafficking and that hurt and distrust mixed with a naivete about things definitely comes through in the performance. Because of this, you also end up rooting for the monster in this given that she was forced into servitude right after being summoned.

The decision to make the character a Siren is an odd one given that she retains the tail and wings of a Succubus like she had in the V/H/S short. It does make the initial interaction between her and Jonah more interesting but not having anything to do with water feels weird for a movie about a Siren. While skeevy, the supernatural brothel was an interesting angle with a lot of unexplored space. There was an entire thing about the selling and buying of memories that I loved and the movie used to good effect. I’d say one of the big complaints I had was the ending wasn’t very satisfactory.

In all, Siren had some interesting ideas and characters to play with and I think it did a good job. Note there is a lot of sex stuff in the movie so maybe don’t watch this one with your parents.

Rating: 4 out of 5