Your Childhood Dream of Being a Mermaid Turns Into a Nightmare in This Heartbreaking Horror-Fantasy

Horror cult favorite Ginger Snaps hit the nail on the head when it compared puberty to turning into a werewolf. The metaphor makes a lot of sense: as a teenager, your body begins changing, you feel like an outcast, and sometimes you really feel like biting people’s heads off. Blue My Mind is an underseen horror movie that shakes things up by replacing the traditional werewolf with a more surprising mythical creature: the mermaid. And it isn’t just the same old transformation with fish scales replacing fur; Blue My Mind is about a teenage girl whose body slowly and inexplicably mutates into a seemingly permanent mermaid form, rather than a fast and painful transformation with every full moon. There are still elements of body horror in the film that are disturbing to look at, but director Lisa Brühlmann focuses on the emotional impact of these changes as well. Her twisted, bittersweet fairy tale shows that even something traditionally beautiful like a mermaid can represent the terror of coming of age as well as something monstrous like a werewolf.

Becoming a Mermaid Is a Lot More Horrific Than You Think In ‘Blue My Mind’

Even before she begins changing, 15-year-old Mia (Luna Wedler) isn’t just a teenage girl in Blue My Mind; she’s also the new girl at her school in Sweden, which might be in the top five of teenage nightmares (the new school part, not the Sweden part). Although it’s rough going at first, Mia sets her sights on a group with strong “mean girls” energy and eventually earns a spot in their clique. Just as that happens, though, Mia gets her first period, and all hell begins to break loose with her body. Instead of acne, her toes fuse together; her mood swings include an insatiable craving for fish straight out of the fish tank; and she’s less worried about having to shave her legs than she is about the ugly bruises suddenly appearing all over them. In Blue My Mind, Mia’s process isn’t quite as painful as a werewolf transformation, but it’s certainly more drawn-out, which offers its own brand of terror. Instead of focusing on the pain of these developments, the movie emphasizes the emotional distress of simply discovering them. It doesn’t matter that Mia doesn’t have an urge to attack humans like a werewolf; it would still be awfully upsetting to pull a bloody scale out of your leg.

A blue forest is slashed down the middle by a picture of a young woman's face whic is half transformed into that of a wolf.

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It helps that Blue My Mind has some extremely effective practical effects. Her toes fusing together is very reminiscent of Black Swan, and her legs are so black and scaly that they almost look like they’re rotting as she approaches the final stage of becoming a mermaid. There are also her attempts to hide or stop these changes that add to the body horror as well; in addition to Mia pulling out scales one by one, the audience also sees her take a pair of scissors to the webbing between her toes in a gruesome bit of self-surgery. Even the beauty of her tail at the end of the movie is given a disturbing twist as Mia has to writhe across the floor in a very inhuman way in order to reach her front door. Mia’s changes might be static compared to the on-screen transformations in werewolf movies, but that doesn’t mean they’re not as grotesque to look at.

‘Blue My Mind’ Emphasizes the Emotional Side of Puberty as Much as the Physical

Werewolves are bloodthirsty creatures, representing the more explosive emotions teenagers experience, while the pain of their transformations represents the physical side of puberty. But in Blue My Mind, the mermaid isn’t a vicious monster; on the contrary, by the time Mia’s transformation is completed, she still looks and acts human, just with a very large and surprisingly beautiful tail and some gills she can hide under her shirt. By choosing not to show Mia’s body changing in real time and focusing on the aftermath of her discoveries, the filmmakers put the emphasis on the more emotional side of puberty. Mia has no one to explain anything to her, either, furthering her feelings of isolation and otherness. Remember the opening scene of Carrie? Carrie White had no idea what was happening during her first period either, which is both tragic and terrifying, but it was still a typical moment of puberty that someone could, and does, explain to her. Mia, on the other hand, has no one to help her understand what’s happening to her. A doctor’s visit confirms her fears that her changes aren’t normal, and she runs away in a panic, since the last thing any teenager wants to be is a “freak.”

Wedler’s raw distress as she discovers each new development really helps make the movie’s more subtle transformation just as painful as watching someone morph into a wolf. Together with the impressively creepy creature effects, Blue My Mind‘s emotional core is a refreshing update on the werewolf/puberty metaphor.