The Mermaid

The Mermaid (美人鱼, 2016) is Stephen Chow's fantasy comedy, and you can watch it online on iFILM. A young mermaid named Shan is sent ashore with one job: seduce the tycoon whose coastal project is wiping out her clan's home, then kill him.

Property mogul Liu Xuan, played by Deng Chao, has bought up the bay and switched on sonar weapons that scorch everything living in the water. So the mermaids push clumsy Shan, played by Jelly Lin, to pose as a regular girl and get close to him. The scheme falls apart on date one. Her cold-blooded hit turns into chaotic flirting, the flirting turns real, and Liu starts rethinking the whole project. The catch is his ruthless business partner Ruolan, who has no intention of sparing the sea or Shan.

Chow blends his trademark cartoon slapstick with a surprisingly blunt message about polluted oceans, and the mix lands. The film became one of the biggest box-office hits in Chinese cinema history. Watch it if you like Hong Kong comedy that swings from belly laughs to genuine dread. Stream The Mermaid (2016) online on iFILM.