Ferine Review: Corsini's Maternity-Horror Debut Premieres at Fantasia
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- "Ferine" is Andrea Corsini's debut feature, expanding on his same-named 2019 short and premiering internationally at the Fantasia festival.
- The film stars Irish actor Carolyn Bracken (from "Oddity") as Irina, a wealthy foreigner in Italy who absconds with her surrogate's newborn from a private hospital after the birth mother panics about surrender.
- The plot turns on Irina's car colliding with an escaped South American jaguar being trafficked by a frostily authoritative older woman known as Dama (Caroline Goodall), after which Irina develops predatory, carnivorous behavior.
- The production is anchored by elegant widescreen cinematography from Fabrizio La Palombara, a characteristically lush Pino Donaggio orchestral score, and posh production design by Carlotta Desmann built around a striking Brutalist manse.
- The review finds "Ferine" an impressive first feature whose suspense sharpens past the one-hour mark once Dama takes control of the narrative, but criticizes needlessly cryptic character writing and heavy-handed metaphors—calling a bloody gallery-performance set piece an unintentional Eurotrash parody.
- The film explicitly positions itself in the lineage of "Rosemary's Baby" and "Cat People," opening with a Schopenhauer quotation and aiming for the upscale, sophisticatedly packaged end of creature-horror.
- A secondary strand involves Irina's attempt to adopt a replacement child, Giulia, whose neglectful junkie mother and determined father complicate the new arrangement.
Why it matters: "Ferine" lands within a recent mini-explosion of pregnancy-and-motherhood horror that the source traces back to "Rosemary's Baby." For Fantasia programmers and genre distributors, Corsini's debut offers a sophisticatedly packaged Italian entry with a high-profile Fantasia premiere, though the mixed reception on its heavy-handed metaphors may limit crossover beyond upscale horror buyers.
