Blue My Mind may bewilder some viewers, however those who want to watch an alternative coming of age tale will be more than pleased with this intriguing gem.

I cannot overstate how much I simply hate this movie's title, Blue My Mind. It bothers me so much. I have an antipathy toward puns as humor in general, but to name your movie a pun is a startlingly bad decision. Who let this happen? Who let a horror movie, without any sense of humor, have a pun-laden title? Whoever did this should be fired, and if it's writer/director Lisa Bruhlmann, then she should have her final grade revoked (the finished film served as her thesis work for her film school). Blue My Mind is another in the burgeoning sub-genre of pubescent transformative features. The Canadians struck rich gory glory with the Ginger Snaps series where young women turned into werewolves. This Swiss movie replaces the werewolf story with a mermaid, which brings to mind an unsettling re-creation of Splash as bizarre body horror. It's too bad that Blue My Mind feels like the first draft of its freaky concept and proves ultimately unsatisfying. Mia (Luna Wedler) is 15 years old, the new girl at a new school, and anxious to fit in with the cool kids, chiefly the mean queen Gianna (Zoe Pastelle Holthuizen). Mia is also undergoing some very radical changes. She's craving salt water, eating the fish out of her parent's fish tank, and noticing that her toes are starting to merge together with webbing. She's confused and angry and desperate to hide her secret from her friends and family. In a movie built upon the concept of girl-turns-into-mermaid, you would think there would be a lot of creepy and fascinating body horror episodes. It would be the primary conflict and primary secret. For far too long with Blue My Mind, the mermaid transformation is kept as an afterthought to a docu-drama approach to rebellious adolescence more akin to a Thirteen than David Cronenberg. Horror has long been parlayed as a metaphor for the strange and confusing time of puberty, having one's body morph and change against your will, feeling like an outsider, a freak. The coming-of-age model also works as a vehicle for some unconventional urges, as demonstrated as recently as last year in the visceral French horror film Raw, about a young woman finding her sense of self awaken with cannibalistic desires. Both Raw and Blue My Mind (the title still makes me hurt on the inside) function as sexual awakenings linked to monstrous appetites, both literal and figurative, that the women don't know how to control or if they should even attempt to. The genre dabbing is what separates both movies from their ilk. This is what makes Blue My Mind all the more frustrating because the mermaid aspects are poorly integrated until the final 20 minutes, and even then it's sadly too late. It's like the filmmakers decided that their one unique element wasn't so special after all. The majority of this movie is Mia acting out to try and fit in with her new pals. They smoke, they skip school, they shoplift; they're your classic bad influences that a typical bourgeois family would disapprove. Mia's parents don't understand why she's acting out and what has happened to their little girl. There's some tension over whether Mia is their biological child considering what she's undergoing. This curiosity pushes Mia to investigate her family's history but it too is left incomplete, another dangling interesting idea unattended. A solid hour of this movie is simply Mia sneaking behind her parents back, experimenting with her new friends, and testing her boundaries. It's effective, though there are moments that hint at something more that's never developed, like her sexual predilections that take on an extreme variety. There's a scene where the girls trade choking each other out for an oxygen-deprived euphoric high. If I was being generous, I'd say it was connected to Mia learning to enjoy not breathing through her lungs and setting up a transformation for gills. But I'm not that generous. It comes across as a dangerous kink that tempts Mia but then is forgotten. Much of this hour hinges on the audience caring about the relationship forming between Mia and Gianna, and I couldn't because I think the film was too indecisive on what Gianna represented. She's not a terribly complex character but what does she mean to Mia? Is she a genuine friend, a figure of sexual desire, a cautionary tale, a rival? Blue My Mind seems to emphasize a sexual awakening for Mia and attaches Gianna as the recipient of those confused feelings. If these two were meant to serve as the key for audience empathy, we needed more scenes with them developing as characters rather than repeating rote rebellious teen hijinks. When Bruhlmann does focus on the mermaid transformation, the film is inherently fascinating and consequently aggravating, as you imagine what a better version of this premise could have afforded. There is some wonderful makeup prosthetics to reveal Mia's skin peeling from her legs, leaving behind shiny black gamines that reminded me of Under the Skin. When the boys catch a glimpse of her hidden physical afflictions, they assume she has some STD and slut shame her. She takes scissors and personally slices the membranes fusing her toes together, and I had to cover my eyes it was so squirm inducing. The final transformation is a bit underwhelming until you remember that this was a student film that managed to get an international release. The technical specs are very professional, especially the sun-dappled cinematography by Gabriel Lobos. Bruhlmann captures the internal feelings of her characters very well in a visual medium, relying upon Wedler to do a lot of heavy lifting that the screenplay refuses to perform. You feel her revulsion with herself and yearning for connectivity, something universal for every teenager struggling to claim their sense of self in an indifferent world. Fortunately Wedler is an impressive young actress that might break your heart, if only her character was allowed to open up to the audience better. It's a movie that toys with ideas, moods, and purpose. Blue My Mind is a story about a young girl turning into a mermaid against her will and the movie decides that this is a secondary story element. The implementation of metaphor in horror is a common storytelling device to communicate the horrors of the everyday. Throw in the coming-of-age self-discovery angle, as well as a sexual awakening, and it's tailor-made for some strange transformations that excite and terrify the protagonist. It's just that Blue My Mind takes its metaphor a little too absentmindedly. By putting the mermaid body horror in the background rather than the driving force, the film mistakes our interest and pushes forward a group of characters not ready to handle that level of scrutiny. I feel like Blue My Mind wastes the potential of its premise and the acumen of its actors. This movie could have been better and instead it settles for the familiar even amidst the weird and fantastic. Blue My Mind isn't as bad as its painful title but it certainly won't blue you away. Nate's Grade: C+