Agnieszka Smoczyska's The Lure is a promising first feature that bites off more that it can chew. Part of the problem is that Smoczynska is juggling with genres. Robert Bolesto's screenplay concerns two carnivorous mermaids working as performers in a Polish cabaret in the 1980s. The film is a horror movie, a musical comedy, and a period piece. The musical numbers in the nightclub work best, providing some fizz to the muddled brew.
Other parts fall flat. The acting is all over the well designed sets. Smoczynska fails to find the proper tone for the schizoid script. Love scenes have tenderness and tension: one cannot know when the mermaid's carnivorous appetites won't overtake her amorous ones during a tryst. Sometimes the director goes for cheap yuks, as when a Sapphic admirer lovingly licks a mermaid's scales. The result is very uneven and it fails to jell, but it is not boring.
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