Mermaid Chronicles Part 1: She Creature (2002)

Better Late Then Never

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

Just intense enough to provide a much-needed diversion, just lightweight enough to make you forget about it soon after it’s over. It’s not exactly “good,” per se, but it does what it sets out to do in terms of putting us on edge, which makes it … successful?

If you meet some bloke with a mermaid in his basement, and he tells you that it's a murderous thing which killed his wife, then it might just be a good idea to believe him and not steal it to take it to America to feature as the main attraction in your freak sideshow. Because, you see, the mermaid might not have watched the Disney feature. No, it might have watched Nosferatu instead, and got the idea that it ought to be killing the crew of the ship one by one during the voyage.This movie is a blending of Creature From The Black Lagoon, Nosferatu, Splash, Species, and Alien. But it's quite a good one. It summons up the Gothic feel of the 1960s Corman horrors, particularly with the initial unconvincing process shot of the house next to the sea - this shot both summons up the Corman films and also makes you think that the film is likely to be technically much worse than it is. But the nostalgic Corman-like atmosphere is offset by a distinctly modern-day take in terms of partial nudity, an element of raunchiness and occasional bad language.The mermaid is an effective and original creature (and Stan Winston's work has always been wonderful - oh how he is missed!) and Carla Gugino gives a performance which, frankly, is considerably classier than a cheap horror deserves. Others have commented on her English accent: I endorse this.This is a decent and atmospheric old-school horror, delivered with some modern-day sensibilities.

Angus, an Irish showman (Rufus Sewell), and his gang of carnival pals steal a mermaid and set sail for America to try and make their fortune. The mermaid, however, is not as innocent as she looks and has her own plans for the crew and passengers of the ship.For a made for TV feature, She Creature is a surprisingly effective little movie with good production values and a pretty decent cast. Produced by Special FX wizard Stan Winston, the movie is worth watching if only for the fact that it features one of the creepiest mermaids in movie history (Ariel she is not!).Things go awry when the fishy female starts to show her true colours by developing psychic contact with Angus's girlfriend Lily (Carla Gugino), scaring her senseless with nightmarish visions and dreams. As the journey progresses, people mysteriously vanish, and Lily suspects that the mermaid is responsible. By the time Lily discovers the dreadful reality of the situation—the mermaid is leading the hapless seafarers to her home island in order to feed them to her piscine pals—it is too late: they are destined to become fish-food! With a nicely realised mermaid which transforms into a vicious monster towards the end, lovely Gugino getting jiggy (surprisingly hot, despite her remaining fully clothed), and a smattering of gore, the film delivers enough chills to keep on entertaining until the end.

At first it was boring, until you hear of someone dead first. Then the girl talks to the mermaid and finds out she understands her. After that when the mermaid crawls out of the tank, she eats the black man, which I thought was sad. Then the mermaid turns into a girl which I thought it was obvious after that.The girl then turns into the creature which looked like the alien from Aliens. I couldn't tell in the end if those were babies that the creature was looking at or fish. I saw it again and they were babies. Now I know. There is another thing I don't know, what happened to the mermaid creature? Did she jump out of the boat and went to the island or get killed? Overall, I thought the mermaid creature was the best thing out of the movie.

Early 19th century - Angus a carnival owner gets a visit from a grizzled old sea captain who believes that their mermaid is real and is there to warn them of the dangers of this creature. This is when the old man shows Angus and his girlfriend Lillian the mermaid he keeps bolted in a large fish tank. Now Angus wants this never-seen-before attraction and he steals it with the plan of heading to America on a sailing ship for fame and fortune. But the crew aboard the ship meet the deadly side of this beautiful creature and Lillian gets real close and personal with it.This might be a diamond in the rough compared with the rest of the cable TV Creature Features' presentations. I agree that the mythology idea surrounding the feature is an extremely original one and it's very well produced, but I thought the film did not entirely complement it altogether. That goes for the shapeless direction and disjointed script that lacked personality. But with these faults in mind - I still found the film to be hypnotically enchanting, striking attention to the dense material and the atmosphere breaths the old fashion creepiness of monster flicks back in the heydays. Visually it's rather appealing with its darkly slick surface gloss bursting at the seams. Maybe at times it got a bit too artsy and either pointless for its own good - like those edited scenes of the mermaid attacking it's victims and the constant flashes of the mermaid in the tank. I actually thought the death scenes were poorly handled and definitely lacked imagination with the majority of the lethal cut-away deaths being replayed in POV frame shots that turn bloody red. When it comes to the action / violence it doesn't really break out until the final third - where the pace and excitement levels really picks up and we get swept up in some well-placed shocks and neat looking creature designs provided by make-up guru Stan Winston. The well-accomplished special effects are truly detailed and the sensual beauty of the mermaid design (who's mysteriously played by the adorable Rya Kihlstedt) is simply hard to take your eyes off. The atmosphere created builds upon it's confined setting with the majority of the film-taking place on a sailing ship. But the film is still decorated with a surrealistic, dreamlike build up because of the mythical set-up that truly makes you pay notice. The performances are stable and precise. Carla Gugino is irresistibly winsome and Rufus Sewell gives a sincere performance. Aubrey Morris as Mr. Woolrich is enthusiastically, resourceful in a rather small role. While, the mobile score doesn't have that much of a huge impact on proceedings -- the sweeping photography is rather polished and brings another fine dimension to the presentation. This watery tale is one of the sea's many wonders."Mermaid Chronicles Part 1: She Creature" is no more than a glossy and at times an interesting slow-burner of a monster feature.