NOVA Horror Club Screening and Discussion: Hideshi Hino's Mermaid in a Manhole

CONTENT WARNING: Disease, mutilation, abortion.
This film contains extreme body horror, prolonged depictions of illness and bodily decay, environmental contamination, and disturbing imagery. It also includes references to pregnancy loss and a graphic act involving the removal of a fetus from a woman’s body. Themes of obsession, emotional distress, and death are central to the film. Viewer discretion is strongly advised. You are welcome to step out at any time.

Please read the original manga ahead of the dicussion: https://mangadex.org/chapter/bf397fc1-17bc-4fa1-8cd7-2cfd35f8170c

Hideshi Hino's Mermaid in a Manhole is body horror stripped of bravado. When a lonely artist encounters a dying mermaid trapped in an underground sewer, he attempts to care for her — documenting her condition as her body deteriorates in disturbing and intimate ways.

What begins as a strange act of compassion transforms into a bleak meditation on decay, obsession, and environmental collapse. Blending body horror with tragic romance, the film replaces shock-for-shock’s-sake with an atmosphere of sickness and inevitability that seeps into every frame.