She Creature

SHE CREATURE

A 2001 project with a promising premise, She Creature begins in Ireland in 1905 where a fellow named Angus (played by Rufus Sewell of Dark City fame) runs a sideshow with attractions that purport to be an actual zombie and a real mermaid.  The “zombie” is an employee of Angus named Bailey, and the “mermaid” is Angus's girlfriend Lily.  One night a fellow named Mr. Woolrich attends the show and protests when he discovers that Lily is not an actual mermaid.  He gets a lift home from Angus and Lily, then invites them inside and gushes some exposition about the nature of actual mermaids (somewhere there are Forbidden Islands that the mermaids call home, and the lair has a Queen Mermaid).  Woolrich then shows Angus and Lily an actual live mermaid that he keeps in a tank.  Later that night, Angus and a couple of his men break in at the Woolrich house and steal the mermaid along with a journal that Woolrich’s late wife kept about the creature.  Angus plans to take the mermaid to America and become rich and famous.  The bulk of the story takes place on the ship that Angus, Lily, Bailey, and a fellow called Gifford take across the ocean.  Turns out mermaids have a taste for human flesh and the ability to psychically control some people.  The mermaid compels the captain to re-route the ship to the Forbidden Islands.  Once the ship crashes, the mermaid assumes her true form: a fearsome fish-creature who is Queen of the lair.  She makes quick work of the ship’s crew, and she ultimately kills Angus but allows Lily (who she’s somehow impregnated) to escape. 

The last fifteen minutes of She Creature are quite cool, like a riff on Alien but with a large fish-monster aboard an early-twentieth-century vessel.  The journey to this sequence, however, is not especially engaging.  Some of the Irish accents were so thick that I had to watch the whole film with subtitles on.  Most of the deaths occur off-screen.  Some conflicts between Angus and Lily seem dragged-out to pad the movie to its 89-minute run time. 

I would’ve liked to have seen the story structured so that the ship arrives at the Forbidden Islands much sooner, say at the midpoint or even at the end of the first act.  The tale then could’ve been about the ship’s crew struggling to survive while hunted by flesh-craving fish-beasts on their own turf.  I imagine that version would require a much larger budget.

She Creature boasts fine special effects from Stan Winston’s company but sadly hasn’t got a plot worthy of such visuals.