Feral Female (2025) - Comedy Horror Film Review

I recently mentioned the indie comedy horror film Feral Female and now I have had the chance to check it out for a review. Written and directed by Jared Masters (The Nightgown, Ballet of Blood), I fully expected my attention might wane before I had reached the end of this. However, due mainly to the wonderful protagonist character (played by Masters), I was hooked.

In the wilds of LA's Griffith Park lurks a monstrous killer, a feral woman (Kate Ly Johnston) raised by wolves, now stalks and kills the visitors to the park. Inept Australian big game hunter Nigel B. Shearing (Masters) has been hired to capture the beast to end its reign of terror.

The simple plot did bring some concerns as to how this would be able to sustain a feature length movie and it brought to mind keenly the Australian comedy monster horror film Badass Bunyip from 2021. Both are set in a similar feeling location, both feature an idiotic protagonist, and both feature plenty of scenes of random people being killed by the titular creature. Where Feral Female succeeds is that the protagonist might be a complete idiot, but he is also very entertaining. He comes across like a mix of Steve Irwin and a character from The Mighty Boosh, his rampant stupidity rather than irritating and grating is actually something I found very amusing. His self confidence in his animal knowledge was never laugh out loud, but it was very funny. Examples off the top of my head being that he states his car plays loud rave music as that is known to sooth animals, and that the silver jumpsuit he wears is due to animals being unable to see the colour silver.
The feral female is basically a topless woman wearing a loin cloth. Silent and quite angry, the meat of the film has her stumbling across various random characters and then killing them for the most part. Many of her kills have a first person perspective shot from the victim as Johnston waves her fingers at the camera. Then shown to have had quite a violent outcome. Being comedic, I thought maybe blood wouldn't be as pronounced as if this were a normal horror, but the blood is in full effect, and even have scenes where intestines are hanging out. All the special effects are purposely weak, often the victim will be coated in blood but with not much visible sign of injury to themself. The actress did exactly the job she needed to, more impressive when you factor in that the original actress for that role pulled out two days before filming was due to begin (according to IMDB).

Basing a feature film around a series of different sequences of random characters being attacked should be hard to do. The story is by far the weakest element of the film, wafer thin, though I did enjoy the subplot of the feral female's estranged sister trying to track her down. A wonderfully straight and serious performance, despite the ridiculous look of the character. Many of the side characters were forgettable, and the acting on the whole wasn't the best. The film leans into this though, making for some surreal and amusing scenes of victims pleading for their lives in the most disinterested way possible. Holding it altogether was Masters character of Nigel. He is a constant throughout, meaning that as repetitive as some of the kill scenes could get, he was never more than a few minutes away from reappearing. Not all his scenes worked, but most of them did.

I was impressed with the look of Feral Female, it seemed to be made to a higher quality than I would have expected. It also struck gold with the character of Nigel. He could have so easily been an irritating annoyance, but instead, there was a likeability to this liability that made him the star of the movie. You could accuse the film of being a bit exploitative by having a topless character on screen so much, this character I never felt was so, she might be half naked but there is nothing sexual about her nudity. The same can't be said for the handful of other female characters who end up topless, those moments did feel like they were there for pure titillation. A picturesque location (apparently filmed during a heat wave), fun characters, lots of silly dialogue and a lack of much tepid humour (such as sex and scatological jokes) meant that I was drawn into this film world, and while at times it slightly dragged, in all, it didn't outstay its ninety minute runtime. Feral Female is due to release this summer, coming to DVD, VHS and streaming.

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