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Flowers (2015)
Unearthed Films (October)
Director: Phil Stevens
Rating: 5/5
The fun thing about extreme horror films is how stupid they can be. Whacky characters that say and do the most over-the-top things…it all adds up to the fun and humor that a lot of these films have. Flowers has none of this. This is a passionately dark and nasty film. There is no dialogue. There is no goofy sidekick for the hero. The villain has no quips or one-liners. There is just brutality and gore.
The plot is simple enough:
“An abstract, surreal horror film centering around six dead women waking up in the crawl space below their killer’s house only to discover that they are trapped in their own limbo and purgatory. The house itself contains many rooms revealing hints and clues to their past lives and how they’ve come to end up where they are. One by one and alone, each girl is forced to accept their fate or remain in place, between the walls of a rotting house.”
That pretty much sums it all up. The one thing I will add is that Flowers contains some of the best practical effects I have ever seen. The opening scene of the film is of the women crawling through the sludge of the killer’s literal house of horrors. It is nausea inducing. The practical effects are that good.
Flowers displays the type of nightmare inducing tension that frantically scratches the inside of your skull. There is a scene involving a door with nails that filled me with the kind of dread I haven’t felt since I was a child. It is a completely different take on the “killer is outside the door” scene that we have seen in almost every slasher out there.
The nonlinear art-house story of the film is truly unique and is something I have not seen since Begotten . This is true film experimentation. To compare it to other films would be a disservice. Flowers is more like a Throbbing Gristle album extracted into visuals than an actual film. It is a series of set pieces that all work together to make one effectively haunting film. God, I hope I can sleep tonight.
The stunning visuals, poetic score, and striking story makes this one of the most must see films of the year for any horror fan. Unearthed Films will be releasing it this October. In the meantime, head on over to Phil Steven’s Lung II Facebook Page to stay up to date on his next project. It is going to be nasty.
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