A Mythical Creature Makes Mincemeat Out of a Bachelor Party in This Bonkers-As-Hell Horror

Horror is rarely more effective than when it twists the ordinary into something nightmarish to take advantage of the horrors of everyday life for humanity, and 2016’s Siren—spun from the “Amateur Night” segment of V/H/S, into a full-length feature—does exactly that, turning a routine bachelor party into mythic terror. What begins as a wild night out quickly mutates into a savage takedown of male entitlement, where the real monster isn’t just the creature in the room, but the fantasy that summoned it. On the surface, the film seems to be on a path many have been down before, both on-screen and off: a group of friends gathers for a bachelor party, makes poor decisions, and pays the price. But Siren doesn’t just seek to punish its characters for partying too hard—it tears into the core of the fantasy itself, exposing a rotten undercurrent beneath the surface of the modern male coming-of-age ritual. The result is a creature feature that’s equal parts terrifying and radical in its subtext, bearing its teeth to reveal something truly dangerous.

The plot unfolds like a dark fairy tale told in neon lights. Jonah (Chase Williamson) and his friends plan a traditional bachelor party, complete with alcohol, strippers, and all the usual trappings. But when their plans fall through, a mysterious stranger offers them access to an underground club that promises more exotic delights than they’d planned for the night. It’s in this club that the film begins to truly twist, as the group encounters Lilith—a quiet, seemingly captive woman with wide, searching eyes and a voice that unnerves as much as it entrances. Believing they are doing the right thing, the men “rescue” her from her locked cage. What they don’t know is that Lilith is not a victim—she is a predator. In doing so, the groomsmen become the ones who need rescuing.

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Lilith isn’t a killer in a Halloween mask or a demon needing to be exorcised from her victim. Instead, she is a being from myth, reimagined for the horror genre in a way that sparks thoughts surrounding modern gender dynamics. Her inhuman capabilities and supernatural allure aren’t just terrifying—they’re used to scold toxic masculinity. Lilith’s purpose in the film isn’t purely to deliver kills to her former captors and those who freed her, rather, it is to tear apart the illusion of control, of dominance masked as chivalry, and of entitlement.

It would be easy to reduce the film to another “party gone wrong” scenario, but director Gregg Bishop ensures Siren never quite fits into that box. The violence that follows her freedom isn’t random or retributive in the traditional horror sense and feels almost mythic in scale. Lilith doesn’t murder as much as she enacts a form of justice. Every scream, slash, and mind-bending moment of terror speaks to a deeper meaning: the recklessness of assuming one can possess what can’t and shouldn’t be owned. By framing Lilith with haunting innocence and otherworldly rage, the line is blurred between monster and metaphor—Lilith is a victim of captivity and a destroyer of captors, both tragic and terrifying to behold. Lilith is portrayed by Hannah Fierman, whose performance is crucial to the balance between the siren being both tragic and terrifying. Fierman brings a vulnerability to the fierce role while at the same time tapping into the feral nature of her. In doing so, Lilith becomes more than a monster on the hunt—she is a character with agency, and her kills have motive.

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With a total runtime of less than ninety minutes, Siren makes the most of its brevity. Having to find a fast pace and momentum mirrors the predatory pace of a hunting creature, and the fast pace feels as though it goes hand-in-hand with the film’s themes of impulsivity. There aren’t pauses for exposition or monologues filled with morality lessons, as would typically be expected from a film tackling such serious topics that are applicable in our day-to-day reality. The horror instead speaks for itself, allowing the carnage to deliver the film’s message. Siren is stripped to the essentials, with primal storytelling and brutality behaving much like a modern telling of a myth.

Stylistic choices—such as the club scenes saturated in lurid reds and bilious greens—become symbolic of societal decay and excess. These choices aren’t just to create Siren’s atmosphere; they highlight the rot beneath the fantasy the groomsmen are buying into. As for Lilith herself, her evolving design throughout the film opts to be equal parts unsettling and beautiful, becoming an intentional contradiction that would be difficult to comprehend in real life, as the siren is both alluring and repulsing.

Blended image showing characters from Rosemary's Baby, The Shining, and The Thing.

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“You’ve always been the caretaker.”

As Siren reaches the point in its narrative that it has broken into full chaos, there is no longer a line between erotic fantasy and waking nightmare: the groomsmen aren’t just trying to survive a monster; they’re being hunted by the embodiment of their own illusions. Siren finds its teeth in this symbolic reversal—the true horror present in the film isn’t Lilith’s claws or teeth, but in those who thought they could possess her. Scolding isn’t enough for Siren, as the film systemically peels back the ritualized layers of male bonding and exposes how easily camaraderie curdles into complicity. The film anatomizes toxic masculinity, making it more than a genre film or simple creature feature by asking viewers to consider the systems of power that lurk within even the most familiar pleasures.

For fans of creature features who crave more than surface-level scares, Siren offers something unique and relatively rare: a monster with a message and a film unafraid to turn the lens inward. Siren isn’t just a distortion of the bachelor party fantasy; it is an obliteration of it, creating an introspective reaction that is far more primal and uncomfortable than any of its jump scares.

Siren

Release Date: December 2, 2016
Runtime: 82 minutes
Director: Gregg Bishop
Writers: Luke Piotrowski
Producers: Gary Binkow, Jude S. Walko, David Bruckner, Thomas P. Vitale, Justin Smith