Remember when Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone was released as a book in America? You do not, of course, because some publisher decided we were collectively too stupid to understand the reference and/or to look it up, and gave us a made-up, dumbed down version instead.

The opening scenes of The Siren are text cards explaining how a rusalka is created. She is something something betrayed by a man maybe, drowns herself in grief for sure, and then haunts the waterways where she drowned, killing pretty much anyone she can get access to. You know, mostly if they go swimming.

You can see how this is pretty annoying.

Anyway, this mute guy goes on vacation at a lake house which is basically one room about the size of a firewatch tower, but the patio actually overhangs the lake, so, prime real estate I guess? He probably said why he was there, but I forget. (Or he didn’t, that would make sense in this context!) He makes two friends, one a beardy guy who shows him how to get the electricity running at his airbnb, the other a lady who is just always swimming. At his dock? Swimming. When he’s out on the lake for a canoe ride? Swimming. Teaching him how to swim? …well, that one makes sense I guess. On his patio for a lunch date? Foot trailing in the water. There’s maybe something fishy suspicious about the whole thing, if you read about rusalkas somewhere and/or are aware of the movie genre. You know?

Nevertheless, the chemistry is undeniable, and if he can learn how to swim plus she can learn how to not murder him, they may just be able to make a go of it! …well, and if the lakewide body count stops rising and nobody notices that she’s only ever swimming, never sunning or cooking in the kitchen of whatever lakehouse she lives in or sleeping there, just to name a few examples of other things people do when living near lakes.

Then again, that may all be too much to ask.

But getting back to my original point: there are like two characters with dialogue in the whole movie; the mute guy mostly gestures. And okay, under these circumstances, the “siren” does make a lot of the vocal noise in the movie, sure, but she never sings, she never lures anyone anywhere with her supernatural wiles. She just drowns people if she can get to them. The only crossover she has with being a siren is she’s in the water. …and hell, even the original sirens I think hung out on rocks, right?

Ugh. (But I liked the movie otherwise. It had a slow, dreamlike, haunting quality to it. And the rusalka’s nervousness about what to wear and how to impress her man were sweetly endearing, if you leave out how all her jewelry and clothing were stolen, mostly from the corpses of her victims.)