Mermaid

Original title : Rusalki ( Russian,meaning Mermaids)

Language : Russian

Year of release : 2022

Run time : 52m-55m, 16 episodes, 1 season

Genre : Mystery / Thriller

Cast : Pyotr Fyodorov

One day, 2 couples riding through the dunes on a beach, find the naked body of a woman.

Margarita is a detective who is interrogating a suspect. When her colleagues find out about the naked woman, they decide to tell her nicely, as they think it’s her twin sister who went missing 14 years prior, when she was 18 years old.

When Rita (short from Margarita) sees the body, she refuses to believe it’s her sister, as her family believed her to have drowned when she was 18 years old, and this woman looks her age (Margarita is 32).

She notices she has a tattoo on her chest, of a bird pierced by a dagger.

When she tells her family, and her father and uncle come to see the dead body, her uncle collapses, and Rita notices he also has the bird tattoo. This makes her believe he had something to do with her disappearance, especially since she and another detective, Matvey, follow him to a warehouse, and find the room she and Maya, the dead twin, were playing in, as kids.

Her aunt comes from Rostov, and she seems to have some health problems. Speaking of which, Rita’s daughter seems to have health problems too, as she says the sea is calling her. Her grandfather has a sort of shrine, where he put sea water, her hair and a candle, trying to keep the sea at bay.

Rita, who likes to work alone, and doesn’t trust anyone, being mean and rude to everyone, including her family, gets a partner in Matvey, who keeps on getting weird calls from his father, about the case.

Going to a tattoo parlour, Rita finds out the tattoo, bird pierced by a dagger, is a couple’s tattoo, like an oath of allegiance, not to cheat,not leave until death. She then sees her aunt has the same tattoo, matching her husband’s. They have a son who loved Maya very much, who seems to be a bit slow.

His mother hides his box with items belonging to Maya, and Matvey sees her doing it, so he steals it, and gives it to Rita.

The police imprisoned a man who can’t speak and can’t hear, thinking he had something to do with his brothers’ death, but he says it was the sirens.

He is afraid of something, and hits his head against the wall, drawing a magical symbol of protection with his blood.

Taken to the hospital,he does it again on the hospital wall, a circle with an upside down triangle in it,with waves inside the triangle.

The nurse at the hospital, takes pity on him, thinking him innocent, and helps him escape, taking him to her home.

Matvey finds new clues about the case, from the pictures he found in the box belonging to the kid, and finds out Maya’s boyfriend has been missing too for 14 years, his family looking for him.

Rita starts suspecting Sebastian k1lled her sister, because he was in love with her, and has the same tattoo on his leg she saw the man in the video she found in the box, having.

The police suspect him too, and arrest him.

Sebastain admits he k1lled another man who was in a car they found in the water.

Rita’s daughter talks about mermaids and is drawn to the sea. She almost dies one day as she sinks in the water, while Rita left her alone in the car to talk to Sebastian’s girlfriend.

Sebastian’s girlfriend, Diana, tells Rita everybody was afraid of Maya, as she used to tell them what will happen to them, or that the world was gonna end. She tells her Maya told her she was gonna die when she almost reached heaven. Guess how she dies.

Olga, a detective who transferred from the big city, is not liked by her peers, although she seems to be doing her job correctly, until she’s filming Rita’s father, while high from a shot the doctors gave him, asking him if he k1lled Maya without being straight forward, because the doctor at the hospital Maya was institutionalized at, told her Maya had Munchausen syndrome but it seemed more of a Munchausen by proxy. She thinks her father was playing with her mind and k1lled her, and she wants to arrest him .

Rita’s aunt has dreams about her father, and she sleepwalks. She even has them on daylight, and becomes more and more aggressive towards the little girl.

Matvey finds the hospital nurse, and the man she’s hiding, taking him to his place. The man tells him a siren k1lled his brothers, but Matvey doesn’t believe him.

Rita comes to his place, finds the man there, and sho0ts at him, making the man take Matvey’s gun to defend himself, so he sho0ts at her.

The man ends up in the hospital, while Rita walks with her arm in a sling, but she has a scratch there, and there are scenes in which she doesn’t wear it, and she’s fine, she can even sleep on her arm!

Andrey, Rita’s former lover, comes to town, and visits Rita’s place when she’s not there, and sees her aunt trying to drown Yulia. He decides to sue Rita for custody, and ask for a paternity test.

Rita, who is an absent mother, keeps on promising to spend time with Yulia, but she never does, and when she wants to, she always ends up at work, this time she takes her to the hospital, to talk to the man she put in a coma, and her daughter disappears while she talks to him.

The man tells her her sister, who’s a mermaid k1lled his brothers, before he has a heart attack, due to her looking like her, and dies.He draws the protection symbol.

Looking for Yulia, one of the suspects is Andrey, who bought the same clown mask the clowns at the hospital were wearing in the children’s wing.

Rita calls Matvey to her place, and when she falls asleep he is called to the sea, but is saved by the black crow witch, who does a ritual, and puts a protection spell on him, including a tattoo.It’s the same symbol the man who can’t speak has been drawing.

Rita’s father remembers his parents, his father who kept his mother imprisoned, for she was also drawn to the sea, like Yulia. People hated her.

Olga finds out Rita’s father was talking to people who’s loved ones died drowned. She thinks it’s because he k1lled his own daughter, and now kidnapped Yulia, his own grand daughter, who actually lives with him (or did, until she disappeared)!

Rita’s aunt puts herself in a psychiatric hospital, and her daughter comes for her glasses. Olga, who was snooping around the house, talks to her, and they befriend, the woman agreeing to snoop for her.

Rita gets herself in the psychiatric hospital in order to talk to her aunt,Tamara.

Tamara finally sleeps, and dreams about what happened to her mother when she was a kid, and realizes there’s no mermaids.Or so she thinks.

The series honestly bored me, especially the first 8 episodes. I have no idea why, because they were like the American series.

It had way too many characters and plots, to the point it was exhausting to follow.

The leading character, Rita, is annoying ,as she’s always angry, being mean to everyone. She keeps on taking her daughter with her when she works, and leaves her places for a long time, at first in the car, then at the hospital, and keeps on losing her, having to look for her after!

And to be honest, none of the characters are likeable .They all have something to hide.

Maya’s uncle, who loved her very much, seems to be the head of the local mob, and he always takes matters into his own hands, sending his men to do his bidding. He does love his family and relatives. I really liked the bond he had with his wife.

At the same time, the 2 brothers and sister of the man found dead in the submerged car, seek their own justice, setting fires and ambushing the police and kidnapping their prisoner.

Rita’s boss, with whom she had an affair 7 years prior, who cheated on his wife, and had a child with her (or so he and his wife think), Yulia, when he finds out his wife, Katya, put spells on the both of them, hates his wife for it, fighting her in front of Rita. What did he expect?Katya was a desperate woman,trying to hold on to her husband. He’s a cheater, and somehow he thinks he’s got the moral ground! Not to mention, he still wants to be with Rita, and tried to cheat with Olga, but changed his mind.If you ask me, his wife is stupid she stayed, she’s the one who should have left him long ago. He’s also working with the head of the local mob.

Matvey loves Rita and refuses another woman who likes him, but Rita doesn’t have time for a relationship. He’s probably the only really nice guy in the whole movie, because everybody else has skeletons in their closet.

 

They eat a lot of melons, they always ask people if they want some. Whoever wrote this, must really love melons!

I liked the underwater scenes. The places where they filmed were beautiful, and the houses.

The movie poster is given by a scene which happens in the 7^th episode, in which Rita almost drowns Matvey, as they kiss in the water, and then under the water, and she tries to pull him down, thing her daughter does after to a kid.

The acting was good.

The soundtrack was good.

Although released in 2022, I think the series were filmed in 2016 or 2017, as there’s a trailer for it, from 2018, and the people in the comment section were asking if they are still releasing the movie or not!

In the movie, the action takes place in 2017.

Viewer discretion is advised, as the movie contains nudity, mostly from the lead actress.It’s not much,and it’s in every other episode, but still.

You can watch the full series on YouTube for free, in 4 installments of 4 episodes each, with auto generated translations.

Rating : Could have been a contender !