Last night was to be my first horror film of 2021 with The Siren which promised to be a moody small character pieces set on a mountain lake and the siren that inhabits drowning her victims. The film shattered by ability to suspend disbelief and I abandoned it, to explain what happen will be very spoilery for about the first 30 minutes of this short 80-minute movie.

The protagonist is a Tom a mute but not deaf church going man who has rented the cabin on the lake. We get in his backstory that a swimming accident nearly killed him and rendered him mute and he doesn’t go swimming any more. Ok, that’s a reasonable set up and a character that is different from the normal cookie cutter approach to scriptwriting. He meets Al a friendly neighbor but who knows of the siren and is hunting her for drowning his husband Michal.

In the middle of the night Tom is awaken by sounds of water splashing and when he goes to the dock, which is connected to his bedroom, he meets Nina, swimming and fully clothed in the pitch blackness of the mountain night. She explains that she thought the house was empty and that she often swims to it from the far side of the lake but not a word not a hint as to why she does this fully freakin’ clothed. Nor does Tom has the slightest curiosity about the matter either.

The next day after buying oars for the rowboat Tom rows onto the lake and against encounters our Siren Nina, who, because she has been enamored with Tom, has stolen fresh street clothes to swim in and is now wearing earrings from her stash of jewelry and watches presumably from previous victims. Again, Tom displays not the slightest hint of bewilderment that this attractive young woman swims fully clothed and wearing jewelry.

Nina convinces Tom to come into the water and to remove the life jacket he was wearing, which he does. His trauma seems utterly negated by a pretty face. At first things are pleasant but there is tension because we know she is driven by a lust to kill and sure enough with both hands she pushed him under the water and holds him there with her great strength that was demonstrated earlier with her crushing a stone in one hand. Tom struggles and fights but he can’t break free or get to the surface. At this point I thought perhaps he wasn’t a protagonist and perhaps it was Al who would take over the story much like Psycho. But then Nina because she is so enamored with Tom relents and pulls him up repeating over and over, ‘I’m Sorry.’

Cut to the next scene Tom and Nina on the rocky shore, sitting together. I stopped the stream right then and there. Tom’s inability to notice that a woman swimming in her street clothes is something odd that can barely be ignored but to sit beside her in a friendly after she has held you for a prolonged period under the water and you have a traumatic past with drowning is simply beyond the boundaries of credibility.

The Siren is a well photographed, slowed paced horror film that had the characters acted even the slightest bit more like actual people might have been very engaging. I love a good slow burn horror that isn’t about ‘kills’ but I do expect the characters to behave in a manner that is somewhat consistent with humanity in general.

The Sire is currently streaming on Shudder and I do not recommend.