Florida Has By no means Appeared So Superbly Bizarre [SXSW 2025 Review]

Author and director Tyler Cornack, the person behind Butt Boy and Tiny Cinema, is again along with his third function, merely titled Mermaid, which had its world premiere on the 2025 SXSW Movie Competition. Recognized for off-the-wall concepts and a twisted but hilarious perspective on the world, Cornack delivers but once more along with his finest film but. 

Mermaid is a pastel-and-blood-soaked love letter to Florida and all of its idiosyncrasies, from its pure magnificence to its drug-addled residents. Oh, and plenty of fish and strippers. Together with his newest movie, Cornack creates an odd model of The Little Mermaid, one the place Prince Eric is hooked on Percocet whereas Ariel comes from a nuclear powerplant and doesn’t really need to be a part of our world. It’s an entertaining and even heart-breaking tackle the mermaid that loves Florida a lot and in addition realizes it’s one of many strangest locations on the planet. 

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Doug Nelson (Johnny Pemberton) is a loser. He cleans the fish tank on the native strip membership and when he’s not at work, he’s consuming and snorting Percs in his lifeless dad’s Florida property. He has a daughter, however their relationship is strained, his child mama hates him, he owes his dad’s previous good friend Ron (Robert Patrick) cash, and his boss is closing down the strip membership’s huge fish tank in favor of opening a buffet. Industries change, man.

Simply when Doug thinks it’s time to finish all of it, he discovers one thing: a mermaid, floating half alive subsequent to his boat. In an virtually dream-like sequence, he brings her house to nurture her again to well being. Or one thing. He begins to fall for the mermaid, regardless that this isn’t the beautiful creature seen in tales like The Little Mermaid. It is a feral creature that may’t converse and simply desires to devour those that maintain her from the ocean. And but, not even her gnashing tooth can maintain him from naming her Future and performing like she’s his girlfriend. 

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However, just like the intercourse doll in Lars and the Actual Woman, Future is merely a vessel for Doug’s loneliness and insecurities. She’s not in a position to run away or chastise him for saying the unsuitable factor. He’s in a position to be himself along with his prisoner, a respite in a lonely world that solely sees him as incompetent and silly. It’s an escape, like his favourite drugs. That’s, till his secret is found and issues take a flip for the bizarre, wild, and violent.

Pemberton’s efficiency as Doug is an interesting stability of a complete fool and a person utilizing drugs to quiet his personal self-hatred. Doug may simply turn into a stereotypical Flordia Man, and but each Cornack’s script and Pemberton’s efficiency convey Doug to life as an empathetic man who you need to shake into making one good resolution. His slack jaw stares make him really feel like a personality from The Trailer Park Boys and whilst you do really feel dangerous for him, you can also’t assist however giggle.

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Then there’s Future herself, an indignant siren of the ocean who’s extra fish than lady. Sure, you may inform there’s one thing humanoid in her DNA, however she doesn’t act it. She is positively monstrous, swollen and scarred, virtually resembling Frankenstein’s Monster however coated in scales. It’s all rendered virtually, too, so she feels extraordinarily actual, really taking on house fairly than a digital creation rendered after the very fact. 

Each inch of Mermaid is soaked in pastel and neon colours below a shiny, gleaming solar. It is a shiny film and by no means tries to cover from that boiling Florida solar. The manufacturing and costume design, headed up by Allie Leone and ​​Sara Lukaszewski, respectively, are the cherry on prime and solidify the love and care poured into bringing the movie to life. Each outfit is that of a perpetual seashore bum with flowy shirts and cargo shorts. Robert Patrick’s Ron has essentially the most Florida Man pores and skin I’ve ever seen in my life (leathery and tan, with eyes that look just a bit bit like buttholes). The eye to element is ideal and solely makes the movie that rather more enjoyable to look at.

The standard Florida-set film is both flashy or trashy. And one way or the other, Cornack makes Mermaid each with a monstrous mermaid, a fish-loving titty bar, and characters who put on cargo shorts and water sneakers whereas committing crimes. Cornack takes the expectations of a movie about Florida residents and makes one thing that’s each hilarious and heartbreaking as we watch Doug attempt to do the proper factor. However then we additionally get to see some unbelievable mermaid violence, so actually, this movie has all of it. 

Tags: mermaid SXSW 2025 Tyler Cornack

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