Entertainment
Unrated Creature Comedy Is A Disturbing Love Letter To Florida
By Robert Scucci
| Published
Have you ever watched one of those movies that forces you to sit in silence, shudder loudly, and then resume going about your existence as if you weren’t deeply disturbed by the story you just witnessed unfold? This is how I felt after watching 2025’s Mermaid, which begins with Tom Arnold getting killed off-screen by a hideous finned creature that somehow made its way onto his character’s boat, just before saying that this movie is a “love letter to Florida.”
All of my in-laws live in Florida, and I’m always getting sent those crazy “Florida Man” headlines as a way to keep the conversation going. With that context in mind, this is the most Florida thing I’ve ever seen. On the surface, it’s a story about an unemployed fish tank cleaner who finds a wounded mermaid (after she kills Tom Arnold, who’s never seen or heard from again in this film), intending to nurse her back to health before letting her back out into the wild.
Beneath that murky, chummy water, though, is a much deeper story about addiction, purpose, and trying to find connection in a world that’s more isolated than ever. Mermaid is also morbidly hilarious and features some of the most repulsive creature designs I’ve ever seen, which makes the whole thing feel like a waking nightmare.
If you’re from Florida, you may want to give Mermaid a go for its sheer ridiculousness alone. But you really don’t need much context beyond the above description to know you’re about to take a deep dive into a world that doesn’t seem real at first, but hits uncomfortably close to home if you’ve ever watched somebody close to you lose themselves to addiction.
Not You’re Average Ariel
Mermaid centers on our supremely likeable but completely tapped-out Doug (Johnny Pemberton), who makes an honest but meager living cleaning fish tanks. When we first meet him, he’s getting fired from his strip club job because, according to his boss, nobody shows up for the massive fish tank. We learn how lonely and isolated Doug’s life is during his usual custody visit with his daughter, Layla (Devyn McDowell). He tries to connect with her on the most fundamental level, but she’d rather go home and spend time with her mother, Tina (Julia Valentine Larson), and stepfather, Keith (Kevin Nealon).
Outside of his dysfunctional former family life, Doug is hopelessly addicted to various substances. If he’s not drinking, he’s popping pills, and if he’s not popping pills, it probably means he’s out of money, which incenses his late father’s friend and local drug dealer, Ron Bocca (Robert Patrick), and his son, Gator (Tyler Rice), who doubles as his enforcer. Doug owes Ron a ton of money, which the latter is willing to let slide given how long they’ve known each other, but their relationship has hit a boiling point. Before long, the father and son are threatening him and roughing him up.
Which brings us to our titular creature, the mermaid portrayed by Avery Potemri. While wandering the marina and contemplating suicide one day, Doug discovers the boat from the beginning of the film and decides to take the creature in and nurse it back to health. This mermaid is the most hideous thing I’ve ever seen in my life, and it’s truly the stuff of nightmares. It’s also implied that the mermaid is an apex predator, and if she were actually healthy, she’d have no problem ripping somebody’s throat out without hesitation if she felt threatened or got hungry.
Doug, in his infinite wisdom, decides to let her live in his apartment, but it’s not even out of some weird, twisted romantic interest or anything like that. He genuinely cares about fish, and this woman is nothing but. He lets her live in his bathtub and feeds her copious amounts of drugs (often crushed up in Spaghettios) so she can properly heal and, hopefully, not kill him in the process. As you would expect, the already fractured family dynamic Doug experiences takes a turn for the worse, and matters only continue to escalate when Ron realizes he could probably exploit the mermaid for financial gain, which would square him up with Doug.
Wasn’t Expecting To Get This Emotional
At its core, Mermaid is a dark comedy about watching somebody lose themselves to addiction. Doug is such a good guy, but he’s also a freakin’ weirdo. He copes with his awkwardness by consuming whatever drugs he can get his hands on, and I don’t think there’s a single second in this movie when he’s not in an altered state or coming down from one. When he decides to bring the mermaid out for his daughter’s birthday, it causes a scene, to say the least, which prompts Tina, Keith, and Layla to show up at his place to deliver an intervention.
There were several times during the film when I truly wondered if the mermaid was real or a figment of Doug’s imagination, but since this isn’t a psychological thriller, and that would be a cop-out, it’s made clear that we’re dealing with an actual mermaid. Most people in this world simply refuse to believe it’s real, even when it’s brought out in public.
While you should definitely be concerned about whether the mermaid is going to eat somebody’s face off, the thing that’s truly alarming about Doug’s relationship with the creature is how much he needs her around. It’s not a romantic interest, however, but rather a platonic one, as far as I can tell. The man is simply so lonely that this is the only living being he can form a meaningful connection with, even if he spends most of his time drugging her and stitching up whatever injuries she sustained before they met. In my mind, he feels like he lost his daughter, and this is his only way to be a nurturing father figure and feel appreciated for it.
The intervention scene, when Layla reads him a poem about how she’s afraid to lose her father, is truly gut-wrenching and makes this whole bizarre movie pull at your heartstrings. But don’t worry, because from that point forward, Mermaid goes full-on Florida and delivers one of the most bizarre endings I’ve seen in a long time. At the very least, I’ll be thinking about this one for a while.
Mermaid is not an easy watch, and it is currently not available through any regular streaming subscriptions. It’s presently available on demand through Apple TV+, Amazon Prime Video, and Fandango at Home.