As a high-school sophomore in 1995, I took my first film class. Somewhere early in the syllabus, our teacher, Mr. Clarke, dropped The Little Mermaid on us. We were going to examine the underlying messages in the Disney classic. Wait, what?
Not only was this dude my hero, he was also a recent USC film school grad and instantly dove into dissecting the film's themes and symbolism in a way I hadn't even considered possible. His psychotic ramblings sort of opened a door in my mind that was previously only used to poorly quote Clerks and analyze the breast size of my female classmates.
And while he was talking about Ursula metaphorically raping Ariel and robbing her of her voice, I thought I'm not smart enough to truly understand film in any educated way. And then I thought, man, Ariel is really hot, right? Like I would totally have (consensual, ahem) sex with her...
And that was before she got legs.
In order to break up the crazy string of theatrical releases, I dove headfirst into the murky waters of the deadly abyss known as Netflix. But I didn't swim over to Killer Mermaid with my eyes shut like I usually would. Nope. I actually gleaned a few reviews to make sure this wasn't a huge steaming bucket of shark shit. And guess what the internet said? It's actually pretty f--king good. And guess what else? F--k everyone the internet.
With a nod to old-school slasher films, Killer Mermaid begins with the mysterious murder of two young lovers. See, while these two were f--king on the dock in front of a motorcycle, someone or something showed up and slaughtered them. Aww. Typical mysterious, boner-killing beginning.
And if you've ever seen a low-budge horror movie, you know what happens next. Yep, we cut away from bloody nighttime violence to some beautiful, picturesque scene with two totally different characters. These girls have names, I'm sure of it, but basically there's the Hot One and the Smart One (not pictured). One of them will be killed by whatever the f--k that thing was from the beginning and the other will face her fears and just barely make it out alive. You look pretty smart, so I'll go ahead and let you figure it out.
With a nod to old-school slasher films, Killer Mermaid begins with the mysterious murder of two young lovers. See, while these two were f--king on the dock in front of a motorcycle, someone or something showed up and slaughtered them. Aww. Typical mysterious, boner-killing beginning.
And if you've ever seen a low-budge horror movie, you know what happens next. Yep, we cut away from bloody nighttime violence to some beautiful, picturesque scene with two totally different characters. These girls have names, I'm sure of it, but basically there's the Hot One and the Smart One (not pictured). One of them will be killed by whatever the f--k that thing was from the beginning and the other will face her fears and just barely make it out alive. You look pretty smart, so I'll go ahead and let you figure it out.
