Flowers (2015)

Simply Perfect

A Disappointing Continuation

Great movie! If you want to be entertained and have a few good laughs, see this movie. The music is also very good,

A clunky actioner with a handful of cool moments.

Flowers is a 2015 surreal horror film, written and directed by Phil Stevens. Phil's freshman feature film is highly experimental in nature, centering around six dead girls who seem to have awoken in the crawlspace below the house of the serial killer responsible for taking their lives. Oh, and it's told without any dialogue at all.The film takes its time, exploring the characters intimately. It feels very voyeuristic in nature, getting to know "the flowers", as they are called, by observing how they react in silence and alone as they begin to wake and travel through the house. Every one of their actions is an appeal to your emotions, propelling the dialogue without words.Through morbidly beautiful and intricately detailed sets, you also get a sense of who their murderer is as a person. The picture that's painted is not one of a serial killer you're familiar with, but a profoundly original and well thought out type of disgusting psychopath who will inspire pure visceral revulsion.The plot of the film lacking dialogue causes an openness for interpretation that allows you to derive any meaning you wish from the plight of the girls and the motivations of their murderer. The visuals assure that your mind is driven into its darkest recesses, causing the perception of guttural fear and discomfort.Flowers is an inspiringly original piece that will haunt you while your eyes are open. There simply exists nothing to compare it to — an increasingly rare phenomenon in the modern era of the genre.

Today, its very easy to feel a little jaded about the horror scene and its current state. In the mainstream we are bombarded with weak as water haunted house movies or some 100th attempt at found footage (often raising the question of just why anyone would keep filming in such a terrified situation) so this leaves us retreating much deeper, and darker, venturing into the independent, underground, or low budget realm where surely things must be different? And they usually are. The thing is though, while the horror mainstream caters mostly for the casual fan, out with their partner for the night, munching on popcorn, and wanting a few jump scares (and a plot from Amityville in the 1970s Mr Wan) the independent scene caters more for the gorehound which some smart folks like to call "torture porn" as they just haven't got the critical maturity to describe it any other way. Personally I detest this label, but at the same time I'm also quite tired myself of seeing plot less torture and shock in my movies because it reeks of a lack of directional skill or ingenuity, Im sorry but throwing gallons of fake blood and latex at the screen doesn't hide the fact that you sir suck at making movies, and while you may have your little band of followers (hey we were all teenagers once) you probably won't hit the mark for the more mature, seasoned fan who want something a little more artistic, atmospheric and disturbing, which brings me to Flowers.On sitting down to Flowers I have to say I wasn't expecting much. Over the past few years I've experienced quite a lot of extreme horror films (many lauded as the next big thing around the indie horror forums) and to be honest, most fell foul of what I've mentioned above (gore with nothing else to offer). And true to expectations, Flowers kicks off with a girl locked up in a basement watching some faceless antagonist drag in his next victim from her grimy place of imprisonment under a house - and i thought to myself..... yawn... Here we bloody go again. But, it soon became apparent that this film was doing something very different indeed, something dark, something artful, and something quite disgustingly beautiful. Gone was the dialogue (which usefully eradicates any occasions of bad acting) and in its place were other sounds that conjured up much more dread and much more unsettlement than (the usual) victims screaming. Far off atmospheric sounds whooshed in and out, over the top of squelchy, sloppy, and mucky assaults on the ear holes This was a film that you experienced both aurally and visually as a surreal and messed up journey, not something crassly forced into your face like a motorway car crash. Flowers is claustrophobic, nightmarish, yet depressingly gorgeous in its stinky on screen presence (and from what I've read of what that muck was made from it was stinky for real haha). This film just has to be both seen and heard. I really don't want to give too much more away here, but this is a film for the more discerning horror fan, a film which shows that the low budget scene CAN be innovative and pop something out that's not repetitive scenes of disembowelment or mutilation, rather it strives to show horror can be art.The constraints of budget here have forced the producers to proverbially think outside the box and not just come up with another tale of rape and torture (though many scenes within are graphic indeed) to me, atmosphere in a film is everything and it takes a true artist to be able to pull that off. I was hooked from start to finish watching Flowers and I didn't look at my phone even once (hey that's the modern grading scale isn't it haha?) so I conclude that this is a damn fine indicator of what it did for me. As it is, up until now this film has only had two quite small release runs so not a lot of people have caught it yet, in October however its getting a full scale retail distribution by Unearthed Films (which are a highly respected label in the indie horror world) and I expect things will really take off then. I wish the people involved all the best of luck with it and hope they continue down the more artistic road of horror they're on. Only time will tell, but for now this will be one of the best horror releases of 2015 for me. Oh, and ps. I have no connection with this film whatsoever, hopefully that's evident from my other reviews on the site.

Phil Stevens Flowers is not your typical horror film. And for good measure this is a refreshing new breath into the genre. It is a disturbing journey through the perspectives of the six female victims who exist in a nightmare world caught between memory and death. I have not been as impressed by a film with such symbolism and attention to visual detail as I have since E. Elias Merhige's Begotten. Flowers is not a movie that everyone can stomach, it hits you deep beneath the surface with the subject matter, and will last long after your viewing. To that extent it may be (and wrongfully so) associated to the August Underground series, however it represents so much more than the ugly nature of man and the violent imagery it conveys - which adds further weight to the stories of each of the characters. This is also not your conventional horror, the lack of dialogue only adds to the tension and further terror that one relives through the haunting display throughout. Not to be missed. If you're a fan of abstract work such as Lodge Kerrigan's Clean, Shaven, David Lynch's Eraserhead or Takashi Miike's Gozu you will appreciate this movie. I look forward to more of Stevens' work, he is a filmmaker to keep your eye on.

Wow. How did this get a rating of over 5 stars? I'm not even completely through the movie yet...I'm 40 minutes in...and I'm STILL WAITING for one scene to not completely SUCK from the horrible lack of acting to the atrocious audio to the cheesy out of a grocery store gelatin aisle gore scenes. There is one other review that raves about the movie and says they would watch it again?! I can only surmise they are a friend of someone in the movie or they have no taste or both. One of the worst movies EVER! It's rare that I am personally offended by the actors in the film. It's literally OFFENSIVE to watch this and not understand how they didn't just scrap the movie entirely. Even the tattoos couldn't make them bearable to watch. It's like they went down to the nearest crack house and grabbed a bunch of junkies who are detoxing through the whole film. You almost want to walk on set, knock out the director and yell at a bitch for not even knowing how to breathe heavy. The only thing this film has going for it is an intriguing enough plot line to draw people in to share in its miserable existence.