The Lure is a Polish-vampire-romance-comedy-horror-80’s-glam-punk-musical. With mermaids. No further explanation is necessary.
It defies expectation and classification. Asking someone to give you it’s elevator pitch would be an utter waste of time. On top of that, this film, already a smorgasbord of kitsch and crudity, manages the almost insurmountable task of getting even weirder, only to one-up itself, repeatedly.
And it’s not your normal weird, or a type of weird to which you may have been sparingly exposed in some splotchy thriller. It’s not even the type of weird you’d encounter in some pretentious indie flick churned out by a guy who thinks he’s Fellini but makes a living ripping off Wes Anderson. It’s weird weird. Like what the hell have I gotten myself into weird, and why did I bring my mild-mannered friend along with me, they must be schvitzing themselves.
There are two extreme reactions you can have to this film. One, you find someone and ask them to hold you and tell you everything’s going to be OK, because you’re back in the real world now. Or, you’ll absolutely love this slap in the face to reductive genre-flicks and anyone who thought they’d actually seen it all.
If however you’re like most people and sit somewhere in the middle – the pure novelty of what for a typical studio would merit an incredulous no and the slamming of a metaphorical and/or actual door may actually appeal to you. A word of warning, The Lure is deliberately and obsessively vulgar, as if it wanted to alienate even more of an inevitably niche audience to find those few who thought they’d finally found the bawdy vampire-mermaid-musical they’d always been waiting for.
If you’re still reading and haven’t switched over to a review of that new Colin Firth film in utter disgust then maybe you’ve found your new guilty pleasure. Or maybe you’ll be irrevocably repulsed and horrified. Or both.
The Lure is screening at the Sydney Film Festival on Sunday 12 June at Dendy Newtown, for tickets head to the Festival website
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