A Fairytale Romance
2024 · 10m
Directed by Kate Haley
Genres: drama, fantasy, horror
Tones: dark, mythic, provocative
A mermaid's fairy-tale dream of love takes a dark turn when her Prince is not what she expected — a siren's warning about exploitation and the dangers hidden inside the romances children are taught to believe in.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
Finally, someone weaponizing the princess narrative instead of genuflecting to it — a mermaid horror that treats Disney's greatest lie with the contempt it deserves, and does it without winking at the audience like some smug deconstruction.
Haley situates herself deliberately in the dark-fairy-tale lineage (Perrault's shadows, not Disney's gloss), and the formal control—the way myth becomes trap becomes warning—demonstrates how constraint sharpens subversive intent.
The pivot from romance-fantasy to predator-prey narrative hinges entirely on one decision: how the Prince is revealed, and Haley commits to that reveal with such economy that the entire thematic weight lands on a single beat of recognition rather than exposition.