Tribeca Review: Why Don't We Have More Horror Movies about Sirens?

Some of the best horror films take place in isolation. Films like The Lighthouse and 10 Cloverfield Lane explore how that kind of environment influences human nature. It changes how characters can view others in that environment. It quickly turns trust into distrust and sanity into insanity. The environment itself often becomes one of the main characters in the story, influencing every beat. The naming of The Lighthouse and 10 Cloverfield Lane isn’t a coincidence, as a blend of the two is what director Roxy Shih describes her film, Beacon, to be. While this film doesn’t hit the same level of mastery, it plays well on the mind tricks that the vulnerability of isolation creates.

Emily (Julia Goldani Telles) has sailing in her blood. After recently losing her father, she embarks on a six-month mission to circumnavigate the globe using only traditional navigation methods to guide her, just as her grandfather did in his sailing days. Emily’s grandfather once told her that there are “no dangerous seas, only dangerous sailors.” This quote will take on greater significance as the film goes on, but as she sails into a perilous storm, it’s clear that the sea is pretty dangerous. Admittedly, it’s quite an unthinkable premise. How could or why would someone actually want to sail the globe? Even when you consider the risk of having your boat get completely wrecked with you in it, it seems unlikely.

Regardless, Emily survives the stormy seas and finds herself shipwrecked on an island off the Canadian coast. Panic immediately sets in. Not only because she needs to get back to her family, but she wakes stranded in a foreign place with a strange man. Ismael (Demián Bichir), the eccentric lighthouse keeper of the island, has tended to her wombs and reassures her that this is a safe place and that he’s called for help. It’s natural that Emily’s on alert, as any woman would be, and the audience spends much of the film trying to guess if he can be trusted. Ismael seems to be hiding something. This suspicion only grows when he stipulates conditions for Emily’s stay: Don’t use the radio and refrain from brushing her hair. The former is just suspicious, while the latter is just plain weird; however, Emily clues in that brushing hair welcomes the jealousy of sirens who wish to lure lonely seamen to their deaths.

Julio Rojas’s script dabbles in a welcomed bit of folklore, which makes you wonder why sirens aren’t used more widely in horror; however, this interesting lore isn’t the film’s focus, nor is its messaging clear, but its use emphasizes the power isolation has on the mind. Ismael fully believes sirens are hunting him, hearing their screams in the wind. Eventually, Emily begins to hear the screams too, but her distrust of Ismael, as it grows more strongly, leads her to play on this fear. At first, it seems that they begin to warm up to each other’s company. The story taking place in isolation gives the characters, and in turn the audience, plenty of time to get to know each other. They open up, joke around, have a little too much wine, and there are sweet moments that enforce the grief they both feel. Emily having lost her father, and Ismael missing his daughter, take on these roles for the other a little bit. But this is a film full of the twists and tricks that the mind plays, and in their isolation, it becomes harder to differentiate fact from fiction.

The biggest strength of Beacon is the way it plays with expectation. Female audiences may feel this more, or perhaps this just comes from being a horror fan, but you’re automatically suspicious of Ismael from the very beginning, even when he just saved Emily’s life. In what becomes a waiting game for her rescue, it’s unclear if she’ll ever get off the island. Is Ismael actually trying to help her? Or is he so succumbed to loneliness that he’s sabotaging her rescue? Tension builds like the electricity of a storm, as the film culminates in a tete-a-tete for survival.

The feeling that the audience needs to constantly question motive can be attributed a lot to the overall feeling of uneasiness that blankets the piece. The environment looks like it’s underwater with scenes drowned in hues of the sea’s colors, and rain constantly pelting the windows. Shot practically on location in Newfoundland helped build the authenticity of this isolation. The score is terrifically foreboding, as well, with a creepiness to suggest all isn’t as it seems. While Beacon messaging can feel muddled, it’s a slow-burn exercise in insanity with an antagonist that’s refreshingly not clearly defined. Or, maybe, it’s our own mind.