Siren (2015)
Matt Boiselle
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Starring Vinessa Shaw, Robert Kazinsky, Bess Wohl
Directed by Jesse Peyronel
Fellas, there’s nothing sweeter than the smell of a woman’s perfume, and at that moment when she brushes past, you feel as if your breath has been taken away, and you lose all sense of self. It’s the pheromones infused into the perfume, and that’s what causes the reaction, but just imagine for one moment if a woman were emitting said essences naturally, and they were enough to make you insane with feelings of extreme adoration, could you imagine how destructive it could become for the woman herself?
In director Jesse Peyronel’s thriller/drama Siren, we’re introduced to a woman named Leigh (Shaw) who is afflicted with these effluvious emanations, and it is causing her some serious problems – so much that she’s reduced to living way up in the mountains, simply to escape the multitudes of men who could potentially get a whiff of her scent and fall madly in love with her – accent on the “madly.”
She endures a rather nasty confrontation one day with a man named Carl (Ross Partridge) and his 13-year-old son – their visions of her after a nosefull of her scent is enough for the two of them to realize that she’s the woman of their dreams, and it’s rather unsettling… and will play an unneeded part in the formation of the story itself. As time goes on, Carl’s life is thrown into shambles due to his fanatical obsession with Leigh, and it’s not before long that his wife decides to throw her hat in the ring.
In strolls Guy (Kazinsky), a man who has no sense of smell and is ultimately unfazed by Leigh’s floral funk – the two hit it off the old fashioned way; yet. Leigh is not completely convinced Guy is who he’s saying he is, and she might just have this man all figured out. In her spare time, in a clandestine lab on her property, Leigh takes samples of her blood and is secretly selling it to a perfume company for use in their product, and after time, greed wins out and the perfume company comes a callin’ for some more of that sweet magical mixture. To say that this storyline is out there would be a gross understatement.
So, as fate would have it, we’ve got the collective mash-up of three combustible elements: Carl and his pissed-off wife, Leigh and Guy’s nonstandard relationship, and the perfume company closing in for more samples, so much that they employ forceful tactics to try to obtain it.
In essence, the film could have progressed down the path of “extreme violence upon women” and faced the wrath for doing so, but it implemented a fail-safe, rescuing it from what could have been an otherwise muted film.
Shaw is fantastic as the exiled female lead, who simply moves on about her life and is constantly on the defense from the “evil, luring male” – she’s convincing and able to convey sympathetic emotions – well done. Everyone else just seems to run pages and doesn’t exactly show up on the radar, but Shaw holds the film on her shoulders quite respectively.
If you’re looking for this to fit into the horror scheme, you’ll be sorely disappointed, as this is more along the lines of a dark fairy tale with hints of a forbidden love story. Interesting for a one-timer? Sure. On the rack for continuous spins inside your player? Don’t bet on it.
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Film
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