A boy’s life takes a strange turn after a mysterious mermaid bites him. At first, it seems like nothing, but soon, his body begins to change.

‘SPOILER ALERT’

Cody has always felt different. At just 12 years old, he is an exceptional swimmer. He is faster, stronger, and more at home in the water than his peers. But there is something off. No matter how much water he drinks, he cannot quench his thirst. He’s been experiencing odd sensations—his hands tingle, and sometimes, he swears he sees something shimmering on his skin. He thinks it’s his imagination, but his body is trying to tell him something. Then, on one fateful evening, the impossible happens.

A mermaid glides through the water in her arms carrying a baby, with her expression a mixture of sorrow and urgency. She isn’t just swimming. She is searching for something… or someone. As she approaches, she spots John Wheatley, unknowingly about to become part of a secret much more significant than he would ever imagine.

A massive shape darts beneath the surface, vanishing from his radar as quickly as it appears. Confused, he grabs his binoculars, scans the horizon, then sees it. He yells, thinking he has found a big fish and that it’s his lucky day. He sails toward the fish, but the fish disappears on his radar. The fish is a mermaid carrying her baby and places it on a basket on his yacht. Unknowingly, the mermaid swims into the ocean and reappears from a distance away from the yacht. The man takes his binoculars and locates the fish, and it’s this time he realizes it’s a mermaid.

As he continues looking at the mermaid, it swims away, and they wave at each other. This makes him lose attention, and his yacht suddenly hits a rock as it approaches the shore. Another couple is also enjoying the beautiful sunshine on the yacht. They have just come to stay near the beach to start a new life free from the constraints of a bourgeois, capitalistic existence and open a touring boat company.

Sharon and her husband hear the cry of a baby on the yacht. At first, her husband ignores the sound, but he became more assertive. Both decide to go and check, only to find a baby in a basket. Sharon picks up the baby and holds him in her arms. She asks her husband if they can care for the baby, but her husband tells her that’s impossible because it’s just a baby they have just found. Finally, they take the baby and walk away from the yacht, as Sharon names it Cody.

Cody grows up under the care of Sharon and her husband, and thirteen years later, Cody starts participating in swimming competitions along the shore. On the day of the competition, Cody delays getting to the competition on time. He reaches the shore only to realize that the last ferry has just left. The captain instructs Cody to wait and take the next ship, but he can’t wait. He suddenly dives into the water to catch up with the ferry just leaving.

The captain and other passengers on the ferry were surprised to see Cody swimming until he got to the ferry. Just before the 100-meter freestyle swimming starts, Cody arrives at the venue to participate in the swimming competition. He tries his best but takes second place as his opponent team, the Marlins, wins, with Sean Marshall defeating him.

John tells people he once saw a mermaid, but no one believes him. After all, he is just a simple fisherman who earns a living from selling the few fish he can get from the sea. Even his friend Joe mocks him for seeing a mermaid which doesn’t exist. As John gets home, he tells his friend Joe that one of these fine days he will catch a mermaid. Joe doesn’t believe him as usual since he doesn’t even have a mermaid bait.

Cody’s second position in the swimming competition makes him the most popular guy in his school, but he doesn’t care much about it. For him, all that matters is that he feels good being in the water. Even his girlfriend Sam really feels so good about it because she’s dating the most famous guy in school, making her the most famous girl in school as well.

Despite Cody’s efforts and prowess in swimming, he isn’t as good academically as his classmates. In fact, he has just scored an F in the previous test. While in school that day, the teacher decides to split the class into two groups for the upcoming lesson about marine biology. This makes Cody extremely happy, as he loves everything related to sea life. Checking the list, he discovers he would be working with Jess Wheatley as his partner.

Jess tells Cody he’s more knowledgeable about marine subjects, including seals, walruses, and general sea life, so marine biology is more of a hobby to him. As he talks to Cody, Cody is busy drinking water from a sink. Cody keeps drinking water until Jess is finishes talking to him. This is when Cody’s life starts taking a different direction. He starts drinking more water than a normal person can drink until Jess becomes surprised.

Before breaking home for the weekend, Jess requests to meet Cody the following day to briefly discuss marine biology if he doesn’t mind. However, Cody tells Jess the following day will be a big day for him because it will be his Cody’s birthday.

The following morning, Cody celebrates his birthday with friends and family. He receives many gifts, but something strange happens. When his parents bring the cake, Cody smells and doesn’t eat it. Instead, he dashes into the house to drink water again. He has started developing some unnatural thirst that could only be quenched by water or any other nearby drink. On his thirteenth birthday, Jess shows up and brings him a gift, including his girlfriend, Sam.

While Cody was still in the house drinking water, Sam decides to follow him and hands him the unique gift of her portrait. In the evening, Sharon and her husband decide to go to Cody’s bedroom and gift him with a book about 20 leagues of the sea. Both have a slight conversation, telling Cody that being a teenager at 13 years old means everything else is going to change in his life and that nothing will remain the same.

Cody’s parents didn’t mean it because it was just an informal conversation. Unfortunately, his parents’ words were just about to come true. Cody reads the book before sleeping as his parents left the bedroom. That night, the mermaid who had placed him in the basket appears outside the water on the shore and gazes directly at the house Cody is sleeping, and Cody dreams of swimming underwater in the ocean, where he meets the mermaid.

The dream is cut short by the alarm clock to wake Cody up. Electric waves emanate from his hand as he touches the clock to turn it off, and the clock dies down. He still wakes up thirsty and heads to the kitchen to take a drink from the refrigerator. After drinking, he puts the packet on the cabinet, but it also sticks to his hands. He squeezes it and forcefully removes it from his hands with much resistance. Cody looks at his hands but doesn’t understand what’s happening.

Sharon, upon seeing that, silently looks at her son and also looks at her hands as well. While she can’t see anything wrong with her hands, Cody realizes that something strange is happening to his hands. The next time, Cody hangs out at the beach with Jess. Cody tells Jess he’s failing in biology and would like Jess to help him. Jess agrees, but only under one condition – if Cody could teach him to swim without drowning. As their conversation continues, Cody stretches out his hand to greet Jess, signifying their deal with each other.

Again, something strange happens. Scales suddenly appear on Cody’s palms. As Jess sees this, he freaks out and wonders what’s happening to Cody. Jess says he had only seen them on lizards and frogs, which makes Cody even more worried. Out of anxiety and lack of understanding of what was happening, Cody rushes home and locks himself in his room. He looks at himself in the mirror and tries as much as possible to wash the scales off his hands, but nothing changes. Sharon starts getting worried and suspects something is wrong with Cody, but Cody tells his mum that everything is alright.

As he walks down the stairs to go and have dinner, Cody takes a brief deep breath, and scales disappear from his palms. The next day, he meets Jess in school, who tries to give him a biological explanation for his condition. According to Jess, every human usually has a tail like the toads before birth. For most people, the tail disappears but is retained in a few individuals. Therefore, the only explanation Jess had was that Cody might have developed scales while young, and they may have persisted throughout his life.

While Jess’ explanation isn’t logical, Cody tells him not to talk about it again because he has managed to make scales disappear from his body, as this could jeopardize Cody’s reputation in school. Both agreed to meet after school at Jess’s place to start working on the marine biology project because Cody’s parents were taking the boat away for the next few days for their boat tour business.

As Cody arrives at Jess’s home, he enters Jess’s father’s workshop, where he sees many objects, including sculptures. Jess warns him not to join his father’s workshop, and suddenly John appears. John already knows Cody’s parents run a boat tour business along the shore because he’s in the salvage business but also does a bit of fishing. Immediately, John asks Cody whether his parents have ever told him of seeing something strange along the sea, like a creature that defies logic.

At first, Cody doesn’t really understand what John was asking, but Cody admitted that his father once caught a cuttlefish that looked like Regis. Cody asks John if he really believes mermaids exist, and Mr. John Wheatly tells John that he not only believes in mermaids but has actually seen a real, live mermaid. The boys go out to embark on their biology project.

Since Cody turned 13, his unnatural thirst has increased to the extent that he even asks for water during the lessons. Cody can’t do without water, and he even has to drink water from the sink during the lesson breaks. This behavior seems unnatural and becomes shocking to his schoolmates.

One evening, Cody opens up and tells his parents something is totally wrong with him. His mother takes his temperature but doesn’t see any fever. He even tells them that sometimes he develops a greenish, scaly rash, but even his father doesn’t believe him at all. As he continues explaining how he’s ever feeling thirsty, his father realizes that this could be something serious and decides to arrange for Dr. Schwartz to come over and examine Cody.

This creates another disagreement between Cody’s parents. Sharon doesn’t support her husband by letting the doctor lay their hand on Cody, and Cody also agrees with her mother. According to Sharon and Cody, doctors are just quacks with stethoscopes. Cody strongly believes that his past weird experiences are a result of him having inherited a disease from his other parents. Sharon practices acupuncture and doesn’t believe in modern medicine, so Cody isn’t seen by the doctor.

The next time Cody meets her girlfriend Sam at the restaurant, they have a little conversation. She asks him whether he thinks he’s contagious, and Cody says he thinks he isn’t. As Sam stretches her hand to tough Cody’s hand, the supernatural powers in Cody’s body make Sam’s hair stand straight and move upwards, something that’s not natural.

Cody returns home that evening and gets to his room, not realizing his condition worsens because he doesn’t feel sick. The bottle sticks to his hands as he drinks water, and he struggles to remove it until it finally comes off. He touches the wall, and his hands stick to the wall, then moves all the way to the ceiling. When he calls his parents, both legs and hands are already sticking on the ceiling. This is when his mother realized the seriousness of Cody’s condition and immediately instructs his dad to call the doctor.

The doctor arrives and examines Cody’s breathing and lung sounds by telling him to breathe in and out. While his parents don’t know the doctor’s findings, the doctor requests to talk to Cody privately and asks the parents to exit the room. The doctor finally diagnoses and tells Cody it’s just puberty!

But this isn’t the case because Cody is generating electricity from his fingers. His hands are so sticky that he can climb walls, and his hands and feet sometimes get scaly whenever he gets them wet. Despite explaining all this to his parents, they can’t understand. Finally, Cody talks to Jess about it, and Jess agrees to help him. Jess takes a sample to perform some tests and finds something interesting. To prove this further, Jess takes Cody through physical and practical tests for a week to see the results.

The first test is to see whether Cody could communicate with the fish, so they decide to do it using the few fish in an aquarium. Cody uses one specific fish to jump using human language, and surprisingly, the fish jumps outside the aquarium. This is crazy because Jess can’t even believe that can happen. In the next test, Cody holds a bulb in his bare hands to see whether he can produce electric energy. Again, the bulb lights, producing much light in the dark. As he goes to swim, his body develops scales every time it becomes wet.

After a week of a series of tests, Jessy developed a theory to explain Cody’s behavior which is unique and rare to the human species. While it is too soon to conclude, he can only tell Cody to stay away from the water. However, this can’t work for Cody because all he needs is water, and he just feels right being in the water. In addition, he is the best in his swimming team, and the state’s final swimming competition was just coming up. Therefore, there is no way he can stay away from the water.

Jess becomes more concerned about his friend Cody and decides to research more about his condition to justify his findings. Therefore, he decides to go to his father’s workshop and finds a picture of a mermaid to examine. His father arrives and takes another portrait picture on the wall, then tells him there’s an interesting story behind the portrait picture which he had been keeping for years.

John tells his son about the picture and explains further that it was taken by a Swedish oceanographer, Dr. Mats Näslund, on October 5th, 1981. Dr. Mats Näslund is convinced that he has actually seen a mermaid, and that picture would prove it. Unfortunately, due to people’s disbelief in Dr. Mats Näslund’s work, he lost all his credibility, jobs, and friends, and everyone else, including his family, deserted him. But to this day, Dr. Mats Näslund will still tell anyone who is willing to listen that there are mermaids out there. For most people, what they can see is just a picture of a scuba diver and not a mermaid.

Jess prompts his father to answer a few questions, including one he has seen in one of the pictures in the workshop. He comes across some ancient writing that says young people can walk amongst humans, and their biological makeup is such that their aquatic physiology only manifests in the 13th year of life. This is when his father explains that when a mermaid reaches her 13th year of life, the fish half starts taking over the human half.

Jess also discovers that his father, John, last saw his mermaid 13 years ago. He requests his father to tell him everything he knows about mermaids and does more tests to compare Cody’s scale with the actual fish scales. The results are the same, which proves his theory right and leads to one conclusion: Cody might actually be a mermaid or perhaps a merman. Cody doesn’t accept his friend’s findings even after seeing the results for himself in the lab.

Jess tells him that he sprouts scales every time he gets wet, and he generates the same electric current generated by Eels. Still, Cody doesn’t believe he’s a merman because people don’t just become mermaids. It’s totally impossible. A month ago, before his 13th birthday, he was totally normal. He thinks perhaps he swam by some toxic waste or ate a mutant fish. That’s when Cody decides to tell Jess that he’s actually adopted and the Griffins aren’t his biological parents.

Determined to find answers to his questions, he decides to have a conversation with his adopted parents in the evening and tells them he wants to know the truth about his biological parents. Sharon and her husband don’t really understand why Cody demands all those answers all of a sudden. He further tells them that his friends have done all the tests and explains the findings to them. Besides, he dreams of swimming underwater without holding his breath and seeing some bright shining light underwater in his dreams.

Sharon tells him it’s just a stage he’s going through and everything will be fine. Cody tells his adoptive parents that even the doctor was wrong. To prove this, he goes to the sink, pours water on his hand, and scales suddenly appear. His parents can’t believe what they see, and this is when they decide to tell him the truth about how he has become part of their family.

They explain how someone just strangely put him on their boat in the middle of an ocean. Even after reporting to the police, no one admits losing a child. They stay for years, expecting someone to come knocking at their door and take him, but no one shows up, and that’s how they adopt him. Upon realizing this, Cody suggests that perhaps his biological parents are merpeople. Ultimately, his parents advise him to avoid the water because it triggered the changes, including avoiding the upcoming swimming competition.

Sharon and her husband decide to find a way to help Cody. Her husband suggests they need a specialist since they can’t just sit and watch their son turn into a fish. Still, Sharon disagrees with him, arguing that if anyone else discovered Cody’s problem, they would ship him into a military medical facility and turn him into an object of experiment. Unfortunately, Cody overhears their conversation and decided to go to the seashore.

Although getting in the water is a bad decision, he risks and dives to swim. As he continues swimming, he realizes he can proceed without holding his breath underwater, and the scales don’t appear. His biological mother, a mermaid, sees him swimming and is happy about his son. Cody goes to the beach afterward, and fins appear on his hands. As Sam approaches him, he hides his hands in the sand and fails to accompany Sam to swim but requests to be left alone.

Jess tells Cody to obey his parents and stay home, but he says he must participate in the swimming competition. Although Jess is worried about Cody turning into a mermaid, Cody decides to sneak outside his bedroom through the window and goes to swim. His parents check on him only to find him missing in his room. Although Cody swims and wins the swimming race, the unexpected happens.

Suddenly, fins and scales protrude from his hands. Unluckily, his opponent sees it. John is also present with binoculars and manages to see the fins and scales on his hands. In an attempt to hide himself from the public, Cody touches a metallic end at the end of the swimming pool and his body emits electric energy, which causes a power outage and damages the winner’s display board. He runs away and hides in the washrooms, but his opponent notices something strange and follows him.

Using his mermaid powers, Cody climbs and sticks his hands and feet on the washroom’s ceiling to hide from Sean Marshall. Knowing that he’s hiding in there, Sean tells Cody that he has seen what made him swim faster, and he will soon find out about his story, claiming that the trophy was rightfully his since Cody isn’t fair in the competition. Shortly after, Cody’s adoptive parents arrive at the swimming competition. Cody gets in the car, and they all head home. This causes panic because Cody has risked his life just to participate in the competition.

Jess arrives at Cody’s home and tells his parents that he has seen everything that has happened. Besides, people at the competition are already asking why the winner will disappear before taking the trophy. Sam also arrives at Cody’s house and faints when she finds out Cody has scales on his hands because Cody has been keeping this a secret for a long time without telling his girlfriend. As Sam wakes up, she clearly tells Cody that he’s a fish, which marks the beginning of the end of their relationship.

Worried about Cody’s safety, his parents beg Sam not to tell anyone about Cody’s condition. Sam agrees to remain silent over what she has seen and walks away. The following day, Cody meets Sean at school, and Sean demands an explanation from Cody about how he won the swimming competition in the States because he has not seen him practicing. Definitely, Sean accuses Cody of cheating to win the race, and they both start a fight.

Jess tries to stop the fight, but other students keep cheering them on to fight and see who will eventually win. The teacher stops the battle, but Cody’s life transforms. The team believes he cheats to win the competition, his girlfriend Sam no longer wants to see him, and he’s now Sean’s enemy.

Cody goes to the sea in the evening to swim and eventually meets his biological mother, a mermaid. As all these events unfold, John is following up to see whether he could prove to people that mermaids exist. Even this evening, he’s already on his yacht with binoculars in his hands. He manages to see the female mermaid and Cody, and confirms his suspicions about Cody – Cody is a merman.

Upon realizing both are being seen, the merman swims fast, dives into the deep sea, and Cody escapes to the seashore. The same night, Cody calls Sam, although Sam doesn’t speak to him directly on the telephone. He then tells her to meet him the following day at cove. He has experienced and seen something he has never seen before, and this time, he needs to explain to Sam to see if she can help.

Sam gets to the cove to check on Cody and he explains everything to her. As they talk, they head towards the sea and enter the water. In response to the wet environment, Cody’s body develops fins, and his supernatural instincts enable him to send the presence of his biological mermaid mother.

His mother emerges from the water, and Sam is utterly surprised to see a live mermaid. Cody says it’s his real mom who is coming to help him. Within the blink of an eye, Cody starts experiencing some abdominal discomfort, and he falls to the ground. He instructs Sam to rush home and call his adoptive parents to come and help him.

Meanwhile, John starts making big baits and traps to catch mermaids. Once Jess realizes his father’s plan of catching mermaids, he rushes to Cody’s home to caution him to stay out of the sea. Unfortunately, he doesn’t find Cody at home because he has already gone to the cove.

Cody’s mermaid mother uses supernatural powers to control him, and fins with a tail suddenly appear, turning his entire lower body into a merman. She comes to the rescue of her son and dashes him in the water. By the time Jess arrives at the cove, it’s already too late, and Cody is already in the water. John, determined to prove to the public that mermaids exist, and is waiting to trap Cody and his mermaid mother. John also moves Cody to his yacht to attract the mermaid.

Jess appears, gets to his father’s boat, and finds Cody’s legs already transformed into fins and developing a tail. His body is changing first, and he can’t survive outside the water. To prolong the period of attracting the mermaid and help Cody, John takes a bucket of water and pours it on Cody as his mermaid mother tries to swim to his rescue. John tells Jess to look after Cody and lowers his big trap into the sea to capture the mermaid.

As the mermaid approaches John’s yacht to save Cody, Cody yells at his biological mermaid mother, warning her that it is a trap. It is too late for her to escape John’s trap, and she gets caught up in the net. Jess realizes his father’s plan to capture the mermaid and take it out of the water, but this could endanger the mermaid’s life. Therefore, he takes the knife from the yacht, jumps into the water to cut loose the trapped mermaid, and helps it escape. John gets angry when he realizes what Jess has done.

As the mermaid escapes, the rope holding the large mermaid trap accidentally becomes loose and moves down with the trap, falling on Jess. John shifts his attention to saving his son Jess because he is sinking from the immense heavy-weight trap pulling him down the sea. He also jumps into the ocean and tries to swim and save Jess. This gives Cody sufficient time to jump into the sea. Using the fins on his legs, Cody swims down the water to save his friend Jess. he pulls him by the hand and brings him to the water’s surface, next to John.

Immediately, Cody’s parents arrive at the dock, accompanied by Sam. John and Cody rush Jess to the dock and attempt to resuscitate him through chest compressions, but he isn’t breathing, and there’s no pulse. Seeing that his friend is almost dying. Cody tells everyone to stand back and uses the electric energy emitted by his hands to defibrillate Jess. His first attempt fails, but he finally succeeds during the second attempt, and Jess coughs. Jess wakes up and tells his father, John, that everything he says about the mermaids is true.

However, John tells him that all that matters is that he didn’t lose him. Again, Cody’s biological mermaid mother appears along the seashore, and Sharon sees her. Cody realizes that it’s time to leave his adoptive parents and go with his biological mother. Sharon doesn’t want to let Cody go, but Cody tells Sharon that only his biological mother can help him with the changes in his body. At long last, Sharon allows Cody to go and reunite with his biological mother.

Cody finally embraces who he is and chooses to go with his biological mother into the ocean. Although it’s painful for Sharon to let him go, she understands this is the only way he can thrive. Grateful to be alive, Jess realizes that his father’s obsession with proving mermaids exist nearly cost him everything.

Cody’s transformation teaches everyone around him an important lesson—sometimes, we must accept who we are, even if it means leaving behind the life we once knew. But do you think Cody made the right choice by joining his mermaid mother, or should he have stayed on land with his adoptive family?

The Thirteenth Year 1999.