My daughters (9 and 12) like the Mako Mermaids, so we sat down and watched this. The acting was so bad, it is laughable. We laughed our way thru this, and its ridiculous dialogue. The mermaids start singing right in front of Siren...Siren asks "Are they singing?" ha. Another silly point: The bad guys seek Siren's blood. Siren offers to simply give them some of her blood, without a fight. But they still insist on trying to abduct her for some reason. ??? On the mermaid tail itself, costuming didn't spend much time nor money on it, to even attempt it to look real. Truly laughable. It's destined for "Mystery Science Theatre 3000". Yes, this is THAT poorly made.

This film is just another one of those little films produced, usually marketing to a single demographic, in this case, little girls. I watched this film with my two little sisters today after we ate dinner, and the film itself left a bad taste in my mouth. That being said, there are some good parts of this movie, and the plot itself isn't all that bad. There are some really heartfelt scenes as well as few pretty shots, and some okay cgi for the mermaids. But the one thing about this movie that really set me off was the ending, in which one of the main villans of the story, a reasearcher on mermaids whose name I've forgoten, gets brutally muredered by the main character, Siren. How? Well, by having Siren use her mermaid powers to munipulate the 68% of water in his body to kill him, causing him to choke on his own fluids and disintergrate into a small pile of wet clothes. I mean, how else would you have a villan die in a kids film?Now, how do the characters of this story react to such a dark death of a character? They literally just brush it off. One of the other mermaids even asks Siren if she can "teacher her that move." Overall, going into this, I knew I was probably not going to like it, and I was right, but I was not prepared for such a unsettling death in this film for little girls. Though, I guess its not as bad of a death as in some Disney films.

Everything in this movie, if you can even call it a movie (it's just some random videos mixed together) is terrible. I don't think even little girls can have some fun watching this. It's not a kids movie, it's not a family movie, it's just a bad movie is what it is.The whole story doesn't make any sense. There are these mermaids in some small coastal town, and it's like this big secret. But some of them are only half mermaids half human, so they just disappear from town when they have to go and live for 3 years in the water. Also it turns out all of the teachers in the school are mermaids, and they have these "top secret" meetings in the "river room" which is not a room, but some roof on a power plant. And they carry these spears around which they call "wailing sticks" like it's totally normal. No problem. And the lead girl has to constantly drink water in the movie and people to throw stupid fish jokes at her, so we don't forget she's a mermaid. What? There's just far too many flaws in the script and the dialog is dreadful. The acting is just plain bad, with the only fresh face in this movie being the kid from 'IT', Jack Grazer. All the other actors are not good at all, especially the guy playing his father and the crew of mermaid hunters...oh my .. they are just unbelievably awful, all of them, it's just painful to watch.The directing, the cinematography and the editing are just as bad as the script. Some of the shots are like someone took his phone out of his pocket during break and said 'Let's just shoot this scene right now'.I don't like being this negative about things, but come on people, you could have at least not made the little mermaid kill a guy at the end. Ridiculous.

This was a wonderful movie about growing up, dealing with changes in life and becoming aware of how the world really can be as we begin the journey of leaving childhood and how we are forced to rapidly mature to deal with what life throws at us when we have no choice but to survive. All of this wrapped up by the whimsical fantasy that Mermaids live among us, set against a beautiful coastal town backdrop.I was lucky enough to attend the screening of "Scales: Mermaids Are Real" at the Newport Beach Film Festival. I wasn't quite sure what to expect, especially as this movie is targeted to a younger audience, but I came away feeling that I truly enjoyed the movie. There was never a dull moment, the writing was fantastic, the lead Emmy Perry delivered a flawless natural performance and the entire ensemble was perfectly cast for their roles and did a great job.The cinematography was incredible, it provided some stunning imagery on the screen, some wonderful locations and a gradual shift from the warm coastal scenery to the colder, more daunting side of town and the inhabitants living there. I wholeheartedly recommend this for all the family, I really think this is a true gem of a movie.