Mermaid (2026)

JPRetana May 29, 2026

Mermaid (2025) claims to be a “love letter to Florida.” Floridians shouldn’t expect their own Midnight in Paris. This film is closer to Leaving Las Vegas or Werner Herzog’s Bad Lieutenant vis-a-vis Sin City and NOLA, respectively. Mentioning Mermaid in the same conversation as those two movies may not be a compliment to the Sunshine State, but it certainly is flattering to writer-director Tyler Cornack. While nowhere near as good, Mermaid is by no means bad. More importantly, it could be better, meaning there’s both room and potential for improvement. The film is well shot and was well scouted before that. However fantastical, what happens undoubtedly takes place in Florida. It’s nice to see a mermaid movie that’s not only grounded in the reality of actual geographical locations but also depicts the titular creature as what it for all intents and purposes is: a “fuc…

The Fixate & Binge Podcast, w/ Joe Curdy September 11, 2026

★ 7/10

Writer and director Tyler Cornack's **MERMAID** is one of the oddest and most satisfying romance-horror films ever made, making a convincing argument that when it comes to mermaid films, there is more than enough room for this to sit alongside Ron Howard's **SPLASH** (1984) and Guillermo del Toro's **THE SHAPE OF WATER** (2017). Set along Florida's west coast, Cornack's film — in a similar setup to Howard's and del Toro's films — centers around perennial loser Doug Nelson (played to perfection by Johnny Pemberton), who stumbles across an injured mermaid at the lowest point in his life in the Gulf of Mexico. Pemberton's depiction of Doug's crippling loneliness is what elevates the film from mere macabre art-house fare into a genuine exploration of companionship and love. Cornack's film has not made that task very easy — there is no statuesque Daryl Hannah cavorting acros…