A bizarre, sublimely surreal vampire-mermaid musical from Poland about two siren sisters who lure their prey from the stage of a trashy Warsaw nightclub.
Hands down the greatest vampire mermaid musical fairy tale ever made.
It’s refreshingly welcome to see a filmmaker returning the Little Mermaid to ferocious man-eater in one of the most entertaining and utterly bat-shit feature debuts in a very long time. Slithering across the screen like some intoxicating sexy fusion of 80s cult hits Café Flesh, Splash and The Hunger, The Lure tells the seductive tale of mermaid sisters and the ill-starred sequence of events when one of them falls hard for a striking 20-something earthbound musician. Wrapped up in the oh-so-thin veneer of Hans Christian Andersen’s fable, this bloody and naked cult miasma features wild musical numbers that are like escapees from Eurovision’s vaults, ranging from Donna Summer covers to original new wave and electro-punk tracks. The sultry sirens become huge draws at the club until hidden desires and strained familial bonds propel the film from absurd laughs to queasy body horror. There are some fully committed performances in this X-rated fishy tale but none more so than that of Michalina Olszańska, who radiates such amphibious sexuality onscreen that it’s easy to believe her bewitching allure is the real deal.
