Monstrous femininity is rarely touched upon, but Mermaid from director Tyler Cornack seeks to do just that with exhilaratingly strange results.
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The Little Mermaid this film is not
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Johnny Pemberton as Doug. He wears a yellow shirt that is covered in dark ink. Image: Utopia
Director Tyler Cornack dares to ask a peculiar question with his 2025 action-comedy-horror Mermaid: Who might find kinship or even love with a repulsive, monstrous mermaid in a world dominated by drugs and money? A man from Florida, naturally. The ensuing romance pushes the limits of good taste, even within the framework of Hollywood’s well-established beauty/beast romance, to serve a twisted take on Guillermo Del Toro’s already subversive The Shape of Water.
Mermaid stars Johnny Pemberton (Fallout, Superstore) as Doug, a troubled young man whose struggle to appear ‘normal’ to his coworkers and family is as challenging as building a meaningful connection with his estranged daughter. Worse yet, his drug addiction has landed him in hot water with some dangerous criminals who are threatening violence against Doug and his loved ones if he doesn't pay his debts. However, life gets strange when Doug discovers an injured mermaid (Julia Valentine Larson) in his apartment. Through a drug-induced haze, he becomes convinced he and the mermaid have some sort of connection.
Cornack’s depiction of this relationship is equal parts disturbing and fascinating. Doug frequently has to drug the mermaid (whom he names Destiny) in order to get her to calm down, and while he spends those moments of calm trying to fix her injuries, there’s also an uncomfortable element to it as he dresses her up in his mother’s clothes and parades her around like an object. Yet, despite Doug’s strange hyperfixation on Destiny, it is undeniably full of love — twisted and warped as it may be.
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An image featuring Johnny Pemberton in the action-comedy film, Mermaid. It shows Doug (Johnny) sitting down, his hand on the arm of a wheelchair. A mermaid, dressed in old-timey clothing with sunglasses and a bad wig, sits next to him.Image:Utopia
Movies about love between a beautiful individual and a horrifying creature are nothing new. The most notable examples are Disney’s 1991 film Beauty and the Beast and 2017’s The Shape of Water (both won Oscars in their respective years). These movies depict women who are able to look past the brutality of their monstrous male lovers and find connection in ways they cannot in their daily lives. Belle falls for the Beast because shefinds someone who cares about stories and adventure as much as she does, while Elisa (Sally Hawkins) falls in love with the Amphibian (Doug Jones) through their shared sense of isolation from society due to neither of them having the ability to speak. In both cases, it is a pair of outsiders finding community with one another.
Mermaid explores similar ideas. Doug is an outsider who can’t connect with those around him. His relationship with his daughter's mother is strained because he hasn't stepped up to be the father and partner he's expected to be. Even his dead father’s friends have high hopes for him, but most of those hopes are irrevocably dashed because of Doug’s off-putting personality. Every person in Doug’s life has expectations of him, and while most aren’t particularly lofty, Doug is incapable of meeting them. When Destiny appears, unable to speak his language and expecting nothing from him, it makes sense that Doug doesn’t feel overwhelmed by her presence. For the first time in a long time, this is a tentative new relationship that Doug hasn’t messed up — and he’ll do anything to keep it that way.
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An image from Mermaid 2025. It shows a man hoisting a mermaid into his arms while the sun shines in from the window.Image: Utopia
Mermaid flips this trope by showing a love between a terrifying, monstrous woman and a regular human man. It’s not often that women are allowed to be monstrous without falling into stereotypes, and monstrous femininity is rarely celebrated or shown sympathy for, unlike monstrous masculine characters like the Creature in Frankenstein or the Amphibian in The Shape of Water. That’s why Cornack’s depiction of Destiny as a genuinely fearsome sea creature, ejecting ink and blood from her open mouth and eagerly consuming human flesh, makes the complex and fragile bond between Doug and Destiny feel authentic and unforgettable, despite its strange nature.
Mermaid challenges our expectations about relationships and what they can mean for different people, picking up where Del Toro left off and taking the concept even further. This unlikely romance, brought to life by Pemberton and Larson, proves there is love and community to be found, even between two people (or creatures) from very different backgrounds.
Mermaid is scheduled for a limited theatrical release in the United States on April 8, 2026.
Entidades Identificadas:The LittleJohnny PembertonDirector TylerGuillermo Del
