Great Film overall

It's hard to see any effort in the film. There's no comedy to speak of, no real drama and, worst of all.

A film with more than the usual spoiler issues. Talking about it in any detail feels akin to handing you a gift-wrapped present and saying, "I hope you like it -- It's a thriller about a diabolical secret experiment."

Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

Mia (Katie Jarvis) is a volatile fifteen-year-old hip hop dancer living with her white trash mother Joanne (Kierston Wareing) and brash younger sister Tyler. She's been expelled from school and spends her days practicing her moves in an abandoned flat. She tries to free a horse being kept in a rundown lot and is almost gang raped. Conor (Michael Fassbender) is her mother's new boyfriend.Katie Jarvis is a revelation and it's too bad that she didn't get a follow-up career. She's so natural that it's almost like she's not acting. She has both the volatile rage and the touching innocence. I didn't even realize that Fassbender is in this. There is an overabundance of white trash cinema. Writer/director Andrea Arnold should edit this down from its two hour running time.

Fish Tank is a film that I had high expectations for but it fell considerably short of the mark. The premise of the film sounds like a great drama but for me it just didn't work. First of all the film is way too long for what it is, its 2 hours long and hardly anything happens! This easily could've had 30 minutes edited out as some scenes added absolutely nothing to the story.The film started off good but after an hour I began to realise that nothing special would happen. It was basically just watching a girl walk around her estate, swear at some people, try and free a horse, dance a bit, go home, leave the house again, dance some more and that's really all there was to it. Some of the stuff that was happening was just cringe worthy. The shaky camera was also rather annoying.The actors done a good but this film could have been so much more. Too long and not enough happening, disappointed.5/10.

Michael Fassbender is pretty much one of my favorite current actors, and he's really the only reason I sought this out. He's really good in it, sinister, charming, super sexy. The film isn't all that, and it goes in places you'd expect and in others you wouldn't expect. The lead character is really unlikable in many ways, but the actress does a great job with her. The final 5 minutes sort of hit emotionally in a way that one would think impossible, going by how the rest of the wasn't emotional at all. The ending provides a nice contrast but it also puts much of the film into perspective. As a whole, it's nothing special, but good performances elevate it.

This film truly has something quite profound and important to say, but does so without straining to say too much. This contradiction is one within which the film operates throughout and which gives it a sense of a painful and claustrophobic reality. Nothing is linear, or obvious, and everything has its moments of humanity and beauty.Desperately trapped in her 'fish tank' of a world, Mia is loud, unpleasant and aggressive. The viewer isn't allowed to get too comfortable with these first impressions and soon we learn that she also clearly yearns for moments of quietness and humanity; this is most starkly symbolized by the chained horse which she is inexplicably drawn to, desperate to release it. There are also moments of solitude devoted to her amateur break dancing, which is filmed beautifully to look almost balletic,giving it the gravity it deserves. Here once again, Mia is trapped within the limitations of her untrained body. There is so much beauty within, which is painfully expressed through her limited physical abilities. The horse is ultimately put down, just as Mia's own hopes of a future as a dancer are dashed.The contradictions continue as Mia makes painful attempts to step outside of her world. Her touchingly naive sense of her own sexuality and power to seduce are in stark contrast to the role of the aggressive little adult that's been forced upon her. So when she is taken by surprise by her mother's boyfriend's sexual advances (even after provocatively dancing for him), and later walks out of the strip-club auditions after, somewhat naively, realizing what they were, it all makes perfect sense. The same girl who wanted to release the horse is simultaneously possibly capable of harming a young child, whilst the man who awakened in Mia a quiet joy in nature and gave her the sense of a caring paternal presence, is also an adulterer, who takes advantage of an underage girl. This is a film that does not seek moralize or preach - it lets the viewer have a sense of agency, but also forces us to stay in that uncomfortable grey area, where, rather than celebrating adversity overcome, we are confronted with it head on and left to draw our own (possibly painful)conclusions. Life circumstances do shape us, but rather than giving us a neatly tied up Hollywood ending, where our protagonist is released from her shackles, we are given a much more quiet celebration of profound moments within a bleak and dreary life and landscape.