Reading the Mermaid Sisters of Smoczyńska’s (2015) “The Lure” as More Than Shoreline Strangers: Toward a Feminist Solidarity with Nonhuman Others

Abstract

The monstrous mermaid sisters of Agnieszka Smoczyńska’s musical horror film, The Lure (2015), mysteriously appear along the Polish shoreline and threaten to cannibalize men. Although unusual in the horror genre, Smoczyńska’s combination of musical numbers and aquatic gothic monsters strategically appropriates elements of mermaid mythology to create a contemporary story of bodily performativity and sisterhood. Following a critical consideration of the literary and cultural histories associated with the mermaid, this article presents a textual analysis of The Lure and related paratexts (director interviews, industry expert reviews, scholarly criticism). From one analytic reading perspective, The Lure’s can be read as a coming of age story that implies that bodily transformations interrupt the solidarity of sisterhood. This reading illuminates differential associations with feminism and women’s agency that are particularly poignant in the context of the Polish Solidarity movement. Extending this feminist reading position, I develop a counter-reading that attends to the nonhuman relations between the film’s sisters and examines how processes of human exclusion and exploitation are responsible for fracturing the sisterhood. From this perspective, I read the conclusion as a call for a feminist solidarity predicated on nonhuman relations of mutuality, codependency, and symbiosis.