Load of rubbish!!

Lack of good storyline.

A Brilliant Conflict

Watch something else. There are very few redeeming qualities to this film.

I'm sure that, one time or another, we all have dreamed about being a big and famous star, with paparazzi snapping their cameras on us all day long, with your name written on the poster of big blockbusters or with a crowd of fans beseeching for your autograph. Seems nice, doesn't it? Ferocious delves into the life of a famous actress, Leigh Parrish, and after watching it I'm sure you'll get a different view on fame.Ferocious is a movie that confused me at first. On one side, I saw a bunch of reviews praising it, however the contradicting IMDb rating was off-putting. But something captivated me in this movie, and I figured that the film was probably better than the unfitting 4.3 due to the good things said about it.I wasn't disappointed. I'll keep spoilers to a minimum and only talk a bit about the beginning. Ferocious takes place mainly in one location, with a limited but adequate cast. Leigh Parrish is a likable small town girl, who became a famous actress. You can tell that something is wrong, because she appears to be just a simple girl who lives in a much darker world that she appears to.Ferocious has a gripping starting scene. Leigh returns home from an interview and cancels the meeting with her parents she was supposed to have that evening. She takes off her dress and changes into a long coat and a hat to cover her visage. Then, she picks up a knife from her bed and slides it into her boot. Right off the bat, the movie raises a lot of questions and definitely hooked me in. Leigh then heads to Shakers, a night club that is currently closed but scheduled for re-opening soon. Shakers is the main location of the movie that I mentioned earlier, and in my opinion it's a perfect choice for a setting. Expect dimly-lit rooms and tight-quarter sequences, which fit the story perfectly and usually rank up the pressure and the tension. The actors are rather good. Amanda Crew's acting, along with the rest of the cast, aren't ground- breaking, but are good enough that the film remains credible. Michael Eklund however, just like almost all of his performances, really does the home-run with his portrayal of Eric, the freaky and quirky bartender and also Leigh's hurt ex-boyfriend. Not everything is positive though. A few plot points got me face-palming myself repeatedly, and truly got me wondering what the heck the writers were thinking. The characters also could have gotten a bit more development. Leigh, Tess and Eric were fleshed out enough, but Sal didn't feel three-dimensional beyond his layers of evil, and Callum is just the typical manager, and never changes beyond that. Not to mention that Tess really breaks her character towards the end.In the end, you'll be left with an empty sensation inside. Leigh does some horrible things to protect her fame, but as the screen fades to black you'll ask yourself: "Was it worth it?" Ferocious is an flawed and heavily underrated movie, that despite its mistakes has an intriguing story with a good starting sequence, decent performances and a powerful ending. Don't believe me? Check out the fellow reviews and all the nominations this movie got. And after the film is over, remind yourself that fame isn't always a good thing. It can change the person you are and make you ferocious.

Whoo. Spicy. K Coates was born for this role. The other actors have a hard time keeping up, but do pretty well all in all. It's obvious this is a low buck arrangement (to my eyes, anyway), but the filmmaker seems to make the best of it. Dim lighting and sinister music don't hurt. But it's mighty creepy, just in a different way than the conjuring or other thriller/horror out there. This is like being caught in a room with the world's sleaziest man and having to sit on his lap. This is what we're seeing a lot of now, small movies, usually thrillers or horror, some do quite well, others disappear. Not sure what to say about this one. It's good, but it's slow pace may not be to everyone's liking. This is not Speed, nor is it Transporter. But that's not taking anything away from it.

I've seen many bad movies this year, and this one ranks right up there as one of, if not the worst yet. The wooden acting and dialog along with the incredible plot elements are so unbelievably bad that I found myself laughing and shaking my head in disbelief, most likely at parts that were not supposed to be funny.Amanda Crew stars as Leigh Parrish, a famous and successful TV star, with a very wholesome image, who is returning to her hometown with her manager Callum Beck (Dustin Milligan). She is trying to promote her "good girl" with small town roots image, starting with a local TV interview.Leigh mysteriously cancels a dinner with her parents, packs a large knife in her boot, and sets out from her hotel to a club called Shaker's, which is undergoing reconstruction and set to open soon.We soon find out that the owner of the club Maurice (Kim Coates) has been blackmailing Leigh, as he has possession of a porno tape that she made before she became famous. When Leigh offers him a final large payment to end the extortion he refuses. After things get dangerously nasty, a young woman named Tess (Katie Boland) emerges from the shadows and clobbers Maurice and kills him with a large blunt object to protect Leigh. You see Tess is a terribly devoted fan of Leigh's, and she had been at the club to apply for a job but then when she saw Leigh there followed her upstairs. However, Tess is also totally impulsive, unpredictable, and actually quite "crazy".Without revealing more, let's just say this will lead to a long, long series of events where bloody murder and mayhem will ensue. Other characters come into play as the plot continues. There's Eric (Michael Eklund) who's the manager of the club and not the "brightest bulb" on the block. He's also the former boyfriend of Leigh before she left him to pursue her career.The strangest and most diabolical character of all is Sal, the brother of the slain Maurice, who's also played by Kim Coates. I guess nobody noticed that Sal looks exactly like Maurice, and has the exact same speech and mannerisms. Maybe no one bothered to care.Overall, I felt this film was absolutely terrible with incredible plot machinations and completely non-believable decisions by its' characters. If it was meant as a "campy" joke let's just say I didn't get it.

Kim Coates gives a two-for-one stellar performance in the film. Amanda Crew is terrific too, as is Michael Eklund. I found the screenplay well written and very well delivered, making for a relatively fast 93 minutes -- a fine fulfillment of the thriller's vision. Director Robert Cuffley's treatment of the story's monitor-and-mirror motif, definitely 'dark' in tone (much of the film is set in a dimly lit nightclub, after hours) becomes very big on the big screen; if we are paying attention, we recognize this 'monitor' as a mirror (and that any mirror can itself be a "mirage," as much as a monitor can). And to me an upclose- and-personal look at this reflection of archetypical truth, contextualized in clever and at times comical narrative, worth an evening's and a few dollars' investment.