Horror Movie Review: Feral (2017)

There is nothing worse then feeling like you’ve just wasted 90 minutes of your time. Sadly, that is exactly what you’ll feel once the end credits of Feral are rolling.

The synopsis of Feral is bare-bones and the film seems weirdly proud of how little time it gives its characters to develop. A group of med-school students have hiked into remote woods for a getaway. They then come under attack from creatures infected by some kind of virus. A virus that turns those infected feral too.

The charactes…holy hell…the characters. The film spends about 10 minutes setting them up in the laziest way possible. We have Alice (Scout Taylor-Compton) and her new girlfriend Jules (Olivia Luccardi). Their friend, Gina (Landry Allbright) and her boyfriend, Jesse (Brock Kelly) who had a fling with Alice and doesn’t believe that she is gay. Finally, there is Brienne (Renee Olstead) and her boyfriend, Matt (George Finn), the latter is the first to be killed off before we’ve even had a chance to remember his name.

At no stage does anyone act like they even really know each other. Let alone like each other creating a massive disconnect with the supposed ‘emotional’ moments.

After a short amount of time setting up basic character development the horror begins and Matt is killed while Brienne is injured. The group decide to wait until morning before getting help (get used to that) and the next day they meet local, mysterious and ominous local, Talbot (Lew Temple). He offers to help them and brings them back to his isolated cabin all the while your body will be contorted because of how much sighing you will be doing.

It’s hilarious later when the movie reveals his true intentions as if it wasn’t the most cliched and predictable thing in the film.

Cliched. That’s the word that will constantly jump to mind as Feral lazily plays out exactly as you’d expect. No effort is put in to further the earlier character traits established and when the film tries to suddenly force in some it falls extremely flat.

There is no emotional investment here so when the group are under attack and relationships are strained you just won’t care. It tries with a character slowly transforming into a feral but most of the time you’ll be wondering just who that particular character is!

With such poor characters and plot, you’d expect the make-up and effects to be at least be top-notch stuff but unfortunately, you’ll be disappointed again. The ‘feral’ are poor rip-offs of the creatures from The Descent and while they are pretty brutal they suffer from the horror cliché of knowing just when to pop up for a jump scare.

The film does at least have some decent gore as the feral bite and rip. The blood sprays and looks convincing but that’s it.

It plays out exactly as you would expect but not in any kind of satisfying way. It’s not the cast’s fault, most of them do the best they can with such poor writing but this isn’t a movie to put proudly on the CV/Resume. Avoid.