SIREN

"Seduction is murder ...".

SIREN opens with the voluptuous Rachel (Anna Skellern) walking alone in her skimpy red dress along a deserted highway. A 4x4 pulls up and offers the silent brunette a lift. She flashes a bit of cleavage and hops in.

A short while later the driver, Ken (Eoin Macken), pulls over so she can use a rest stop. Feeling horny, Ken follows her in to the public toilet moments later and imposes himself upon her. She’s into it to begin with ... until she convinces herself that she noticed a blonde female spying on them.

Ah, it turns out that Ken and Rachel are an item, and this ‘pick up’ malarkey was just their idea of saucy role play. In actual fact, they’re on their way to meet up with Rachel’s old flame Marco (Anthony Jabre), so the three of them can hire a boat for the weekend and explore a nearby Greek island.

It turns out Marco still has the hots for Rachel, and has lived to regret his earlier decision to end their relationship so he could travel the world and "find himself". Too bad, loser, now you have to stay on deck steering the boat while listening to Ken bone your ex down below.

Any sense of tranquillity is soon cut short when they spot a distressed man swimming in the sea. They pull him onto their boat and watch in horror as he starts bleeding from his ears, screaming his way to an agonising death.

Our bewildered trio deliberate for all of five minutes over what to do next: unwisely, Ken decides they should make it to shore and bury the man’s body on the beach. They’ve barely dug the grave though, when they notice an onlooker in the distance. Rachel gives chase to the seemingly frightened woman and calms her, discovering her name to be Silka (Tereza Srbova).

Taking Silka back to their boat, our three protagonists try to extract a few facts from the nervous blonde. Like, what’s got her so scared? Who was the man they just buried? "I just wanna know what the fuck is going on", mutters Ken.

Allowing Silka to rest on their vessel while they think about what to do next, the boys bond while Rachel suffers recurring nightmarish visions about the man they’ve just buried. She has a sense of ill foreboding about this situation, even if they don’t...

Back on the island for a reason I don’t quite remember, Marco begins to get fresh with Silka while Rachel and Ken do some exploring of their surroundings. It seems our nervous blonde is settled after her rest, and has no qualms about getting naked for the bearded stranger.

Yeah, she’s a strange one, all right. More strange, in fact, than any of these braindead morons could have anticipated. Mind, they are all too busy fucking each other at different points to pay attention to much else...

Performances are quite horrible, especially Jabre’s. The guy can’t act for toffee. None of the cast are helped much by a monotonous and stilted screenplay (co-written by director Andrew Hull and Geoffrey Gunn). It’s so directionless for the most part that Hull has to pepper it with frequent sex scenes – girl-on-girl fun, anyone? - just to bolster the running time up to 86 minutes. The end result isn’t as fun as that may sound.

SIREN is a good-looking film though, cinematographer Will Humphris taking full advantage of the golden Tunisian visuals. His widescreen compositions are consistently attractive, and Hull seems as fond of focusing on toned young flesh as he does the gorgeous clear blue seas. Aesthetically, SIREN is hard to fault.

But it’s pretty ponderous and never amounts to much: suspense is never generated; credibility is strained at regular intervals. You’d think too, that a film with such a small cast and simple storyline would rely on intriguing character development. But there is none.

Best or worst of all, depending on your stance, is the fact that much of SIREN is very, very amusing. It’s not meant to be, but a combination of abysmal acting and rum dialogue render each supposed moment of ‘tension’ quite hilarious. Just wait until Silka starts singing, for instance.

SIREN is presented on Matchbox Films’ DVD in anamorphic 2.35:1 and looks fairly good, benefiting from the sun-kissed locations which help the film to attain an often vibrant look. Colours are good and a fair amount of detail is provided.

English audio comes in 2.0 and 5.1 options. Both are sufficient but unremarkable affairs.

A static main menu page leads into an equally static scene-selection menu offering access to the film by way of 12 chapter stops.

The only extras on the disc are 9-and-a-half minutes of deleted scenes. Or "cut scenes", as the filmmakers put it. A little bit more lesbianism here, some ‘skullbuggery’ (?!) there ... there’s nothing the main feature misses.

SIREN is an attractive but boring and very tame film with nothing fresh to offer seasoned horror viewers.

Also available on blu-ray.

Review by Stuart Willis