TOM's Film Club: The Lure (15)

A bold and explosive vampiric debut from Polish director Agnieszka Smoczynska, The Lure is a genre-defying horror-musical hybrid that provides a fresh take on Hans Christian Andersen’s The Little Mermaid, but with a viscerally sensual, darkly feminist twist on the classic tale.

Golden (Michalina Olszanska) and Silver (Marta Mazurek) are a pair of carnivorous mermaid sisters drawn ashore to explore life on land in an alternative 1980s Communist-era Poland, where their tantalizing siren songs and otherworldly auras make them overnight sensations as nightclub singers in the half-glam, half decrepit world of Smoczynska’s imagining. However, the girls’ bond is tested and their survival threatened after one sister falls for a human.

A coming-of-age fairytale lore with a catchy synth-fueled soundtrack, outrageous song-and-dance numbers, and lavishly grimy sets, The Lure explores its themes of emerging female sexuality, exploitation, and the compromises of adulthood with savage energy and originality.

“The Lure Is the best goth musical about man-eating mermaids ever made [...] a wonderfully demented new musical that bridges the gap between Hans Christian Andersen and Nine Inch Nails"
David Ehrlich, IndieWire