Florida Has Never Looked So Beautifully Weird [SXSW 2025 Review]

Writer and director Tyler Cornack, the man behind Butt Boy and Tiny Cinema, is back with his third feature, simply titled Mermaid, which had its world premiere at the 2025 SXSW Film Festival. Known for off-the-wall ideas and a twisted yet hilarious perspective on the world, Cornack delivers yet again with his best movie yet. 

Mermaid is a pastel-and-blood-soaked love letter to Florida and all of its idiosyncrasies, from its natural beauty to its drug-addled citizens. Oh, and lots of fish and strippers. With his latest film, Cornack creates a strange version of The Little Mermaid, one where Prince Eric is addicted to Percocet while Ariel comes from a nuclear powerplant and doesn’t actually want to be part of our world. It’s an entertaining and even heart-breaking take on the mermaid that loves Florida so much and also realizes it’s one of the strangest places on the planet. 

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Doug Nelson (Johnny Pemberton) is a loser. He cleans the fish tank at the local strip club and when he’s not at work, he’s drinking and snorting Percs in his dead dad’s Florida estate. He has a daughter, but their relationship is strained, his baby mama hates him, he owes his dad’s old friend Ron (Robert Patrick) money, and his boss is closing down the strip club’s massive fish tank in favor of opening a buffet. Industries change, man.

Just when Doug thinks it’s time to end it all, he discovers something: a mermaid, floating half alive next to his boat. In an almost dream-like sequence, he brings her home to nurture her back to health. Or something. He starts to fall for the mermaid, even though this isn’t the gorgeous creature seen in stories like The Little Mermaid. This is a feral creature that can’t speak and just wants to devour those who keep her from the ocean. And yet, not even her gnashing teeth can keep him from naming her Destiny and acting like she’s his girlfriend. 

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But, like the sex doll in Lars and the Real Girl, Destiny is merely a vessel for Doug’s loneliness and insecurities. She’s not able to run away or chastise him for saying the wrong thing. He’s able to be himself with his prisoner, a respite in a lonely world that only sees him as incompetent and stupid. It’s an escape, like his favorite pills. That is, until his secret is discovered and things take a turn for the weird, wild, and violent.

Pemberton’s performance as Doug is a fascinating balance of a total idiot and a man using pills to quiet his own self-hatred. Doug could easily become a stereotypical Flordia Man, and yet both Cornack’s script and Pemberton’s performance bring Doug to life as an empathetic guy who you want to shake into making one good decision. His slack jaw stares make him feel like a character from The Trailer Park Boys and while you do feel bad for him, you also can’t help but laugh.

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Then there is Destiny herself, an angry siren of the sea who is more fish than woman. Yes, you can tell there’s something humanoid in her DNA, but she doesn’t act it. She is positively monstrous, swollen and scarred, almost resembling Frankenstein’s Monster but covered in scales. It’s all rendered practically, too, so she feels extremely real, actually taking up space rather than a digital creation rendered after the fact. 

Every inch of Mermaid is soaked in pastel and neon colors under a bright, gleaming sun. This is a bright movie and never tries to hide from that boiling Florida sun. The production and costume design, headed up by Allie Leone and ​​Sara Lukaszewski, respectively, are the cherry on top and solidify the love and care poured into bringing the film to life. Every outfit is that of a perpetual beach bum with flowy shirts and cargo shorts. Robert Patrick’s Ron has the most Florida Man skin I’ve ever seen in my life (leathery and tan, with eyes that look just a little bit like buttholes). The attention to detail is perfect and only makes the film that much more fun to watch.

The typical Florida-set movie is either flashy or trashy. And somehow, Cornack makes Mermaid both with a monstrous mermaid, a fish-loving titty bar, and characters who wear cargo shorts and water shoes while committing crimes. Cornack takes the expectations of a film about Florida residents and makes something that’s both hilarious and heartbreaking as we watch Doug try and do the right thing. But then we also get to see some incredible mermaid violence, so really, this film has it all. 

Tags: mermaid SXSW 2025 Tyler Cornack

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