Watching Emilija Skarnulyte’s short film “Sirenomelia” reminded me of found footage, a subgenre of horror movies that heavily involve cameras and employ a first-person point of view (POV), which also reminds me of why found footage movies are a thing. In found footage movies, a group of characters use cameras to record their “discovery,” which happens to be the home or resting place of a monster or a deadly nature spirit. Often, one of the members of the group will disrupt the monster’s home or break a rule, which will understandably upset the monster and give them cause to come after them. We always view the movie from the disruptor’s/enabler’s POV, but never from the monster’s POV. Perhaps the monster is going through a horror movie of their own, seeing someone disrupt their home and break their rules so brazenly.
“Sirenomelia” is an interesting short film because it feels like a found footage horror movie, but instead of being from the POV of a human exploring the decommissioned submarine base, we get it from the point of view of a “monster”–a siren. If this found footage film was made from the POV of a human, we would only get a view of the base at the beginning of the film. We’d see the mountains, the surface of the icy sea, the inside of the base, and the lonely expanse of the land. Without the siren’s POV, we wouldn’t be able to see the underwater rail and the sea life that has made its home on the metal poles holding up the base. Exploring the submarine base from the siren’s point of view essentially turns us away from our terracentrist, anthropocentric view and asks us to explore another POV that is not human and not land-based.
Hi Ana,
I really like what you said about the found footage aspect of the short film. To me, the direction/camera angle style was incredibly eerie and I didn’t (and still don’t) know how to describe it. The way it is shot is different than how other things are generally shot, because sometimes when the camera angles feel robotic, they at least have a protagonist to focus in on. A lot of the time nature shots are filmed in a style that is either hand held or panning alone. I am not sure if I am describing my thoughts well as I do not have a lot of film terminology but the point that I am trying to make is that the camera moving along with the satellite dish, for example, makes the film feel extremely lonely. There is no focus, and we have the POV of a lifeless man-made tool.
Hi Ana,
I find your analysis compelling. When i understood that part of this movie was from the siren’s point of view I found the feeling of anxiety to be dulled somewhat. I imagined that from her point of view the man made structures must have also looked intimidating. I do believe that the siren acts within this movie to further dissolve the idea that humans and nature are completely separate spheres. It is impossible when we see this intrusion of humanity in the arctic and vice versa, the natural world is slowly taking possession of these remnants.
Hi Ana, I like how you kinda focused on how this shifted our focus away from terracentralism and kinda made us focus more on the oceanic. Maybe that’s what makes it really scary- that since there’s not a focus on the earth/land/what we’re used to, that’s what makes it more uncomfortable for us to perceive. It becomes uncanny to us watching.
Hi Ana, I like how you kinda focused on how this shifted our focus away from terracentralism and kinda made us focus more on the oceanic. Maybe that’s what makes it really scary- that since there’s not a focus on the earth/land/what we’re used to, that’s what makes it more uncomfortable for us to perceive. It becomes uncanny to us watching.
Hi Ana!
Thank you for sharing this analysis! I wasn’t able to exactly define what made the short film so unsettling and eerie, but relating it to a classic “found footage” horror film perfectly describes it. I also appreciate that you point out how, in this “found footage”, it is not the monster that is the antagonist, like what is typically the case, but the remnants of human intrusion into her home that make the space horrific for her to experience. It draws the focus away from portraying humans as the victim and instead forces us to face the reality of our actions.
Thank you again for this very smart interpretation!