Low-budget Amateur Film with an Excellent Script!

Sirene en Captivte (Mermaid in Captivity) (2014)
Starring: Fallon Hammer, Nick Sarnelli, and Lucas Waldron

Director: Alyssa Waldron

Rating: Six of Ten Stars

A cruel freakshow operator (Sarnelli) captures a mermaid (Hammer) and puts her on display. But some beings are not meant to be caged...

If you've been around this blog for a while, you know we like to go digging in obscure corners of YouTube for student and amateur films and then share those we think are worthy of your time and attention.

We came upon "Mermaid in Captivity" while looking for items that tied in with the Mermay theme we presently have going on. It's another one of those films made by young high-schoolers or college kids trying to emulate the old-time silent movies, presumably for a class project. Overall, it's slightly better than most such efforts, but there are two things that writer/director Alyssa Waldron did better with this effort than a majority of her filmmaking peers.

First, she clearly had a general sense of what she could and couldn't pull off with the resources she had at her disposal. She didn't attempt to show us the mermaid swimming under water, but through excellent use of intertitles and some creative camera work that is meant to seem like we are looking through the mermaids eyes as she swims to the surface, she still manages to convey the notion of a mermad in her natural habitat. While a better job could possibly have been done on the aquarium the mermaid is placed in, it could also have been far worse.

Second, the script for this film is excellent. The unfolds swiftly, the characters are well-drawn, and the shocking twist that kicks off the finale is extremely well set up and filmed. While the lack of budget and developing skills of the director/cinematographer behind the camera and the actors in front of it are apparent, might tempt some viewers to stop watching when the carnival owner goes into black-hatted, mustache-twirling borderline parody of a silent movie melodrama villain... but that would be a mistake. The story in this film, and how it's presented, is far superior to many productions at this level. (I don't know if Waldron went onto a career as a writer, but I certainly hope so. She seems to have had the talent for it.)

Take a few minutes to watch this film by clicking below.