This week, we watched the short film “Sirenomelia” by NOWNESS. This was an extremely confusing, yet interesting short film. It was extremely haunting and eerie, and its confusion only. amplified the feelings I felt while watching this short film. Defined as “a contemporary culture piece of the ‘New East'” in the description of the video, This piece features sci-fi-esque music that is described as the white noise of a quasar over what feels like a soulless video. I found the symmetrical shots in the beginning of the video to be extremely interesting after looking up the definition of the word sirenomelia, which happens to be a rare condition where a newborn will be born with legs conjoined together. Sirenomelia is referred to as the mermaid syndrome because of this. The shots are long, and with the knowledge I have obtained from a film class I took in high school, these shots are intentional ways of creating stress and tension, as your brain is trained to wait for something to happen in a shot. The mermaid creature that is featured in the second half of the film seems almost lifeless. You cannot see its eyes and it is alone. It almost feels like it is a robotic freak of nature. The closing shot of the mermaid swimming in what looks like an infinite and empty ocean gives me a nihilistic perspective of what life would look like to these creatures. The description also states that the film is essentially about a mermaid exploring an abandoned NATO base, but because of the eerie direction, it is hard to follow (which I mean as a compliment as it truly induced a feeling of angst in me). The ending leaves me feeling empty, which I come to realize I felt that way throughout the entire short, from the long title sequence to the symmetrical shots of the antenna.