Directed by Agnieszka Smoczyńska • 2015 • Poland
Starring Kinga Preis, Michalina Olszańska, Marta Mazurek
This genre-defying horror-musical mash-up—the bold debut of Polish director Agnieszka Smoczyńska—follows a pair of carnivorous mermaid sisters drawn ashore to explore life on land in an alternate 1980s Poland. Their tantalizing siren songs and otherworldly auras make them overnight sensations as nightclub singers in the half-glam, half-decrepit world of Smoczyńska’s imagining. The director gives fierce teeth to her viscerally sensual, darkly feminist twist on Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Little Mermaid,” in which the girls’ bond is tested and their survival threatened after one sister falls for a human. A coming-of-age fairy tale 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.
Up Next in Horror
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Häxan
Directed by Benjamin Christensen • 1922 • Denmark
Grave robbing, torture, possessed nuns, and a satanic Sabbath: Benjamin Christensen's legendary film uses a series of dramatic vignettes to explore the scientific hypothesis that the witches of the Middle Ages suffered the same hysteria as turn-o...
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Ebirah, Horror of the Deep
Directed by Jun Fukuda • 1966 • Japan
Starring Akira Takarada, Kumi Mizuno, Chotaro ToginThe first Godzilla film directed by Jun Fukuda, who would go on to direct four more, is fast-paced and light in tone, and builds to a riveting race-against-time finale. On a secluded island in the South Sea...
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Fiend Without a Face
Directed by Arthur Crabtree • 1958 • United Kingdom
Starring Marshall Thompson, Kynaston Reeves, Kim ParkerA scientist’s thoughts materialize as an army of invisible brain-shaped monsters (complete with spinal-cord tails!) who terrorize an American military base in this nightmarish chiller, dir...
