Flowers

source: Flowers

Various tortured women crawling through intestines, body parts and body sludge in a killer(s) crawlspaces. Gore films are not my thing, but this had a pretty good concept and was a bit surreal. Could have done without the shot of the killer's bulbous naked body and micro-*. Pretty vile, but has it's moments. And way more disgusting than the Nekromantik films.

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.

This movie is gore for the sake of gore. I understand it's a genre, and while it's not my favorite genre, there's probably some decent films in it that have some kind of deep message about human nature or death or something. This movie does not have that. It's completely disjointed. The girls' stories don't intertwine on any level, and if I hadn't looked up this movie's summary on IMDb, I wouldn't have understood what the plot was at all. And that's because it didn't have a plot. The different girls just provided a way for the writer to write as many sick, gruesome events as possible, as everything that happens to the girls in this movie couldn't have happened to just one girl. She wouldn't have survived it. There's no common thread in this story except excessive gore, and the ending isn't satisfying in any way. Making an "artsy" gore movie with excessive violence and no dialogue doesn't make your movie good or deep. The only thing good about this movie was the soundtrack, and it wasn't impressive enough to redeem the poorly done story.

Flowers 2015 Writer & Director Phil Stevens has created something eerily beautiful here. A strange silent story of 6 dead girls who awaken under the floor of their killers home. Nothing here but a dream state. No dialogue just beauty. The films visuals are outstanding. Violent imagery and gore aplenty but its not there for shock value. Its all part of a bigger picture. The 6 beautiful women have been slaughtered, cut open, beaten and abused but not only is that reflected on their bodies but also in the entire house. There really is a feeling of dread and pain here and you see this as these dead women walk around their surroundings trying to figure out why. This film looks dirty thanks to the cinematography and set design but its classy and very professional. I can see a lot of people are going to find this film hard at over an hour long with no dialogue but it really is worth it and I've never seen anything like this before. The musical score is absolutely fantastic and probably my favourite score in a long time. This is pretty much the best looking indie film since pieces of talent. Find a copy. You really should experience this 8 and a half outta 10

I feel as though I just awoke from a dream. A nightmare. How is one to review a film that has no dialogue and relies on sound and visuals alone? I'm not sure myself. This will be the first time I review a film that relies solely on sound and visuals to tell its story. And what a story it was! I have a plethora of thoughts at the moment, mostly one or two word descriptions. I will list a few that jumped off the screen at me... Dark and brutal. Disgustingly perverse. Disturbing. Sick and twisted. Mesmerizing. Terrifyingly traumatic. Death and decay. Chilling. A harrowing journey into the depths of a mind insane. While to some those words are discouraging, to me they are exactly what I want in a horror film. I don't care that there was no dialogue. There was no need for any. This dreamlike, nightmarish story was told in such a way that the absolute best way I can describe it as a whole is beautifully haunting. Throughout all the madness, there were moments of lucidity and it all came together in the end. This is a film that must be experienced. The special effects were believably gruesome. I congratulate these girls, these Flowers, for what they put themselves through in order to help writer/director Phil Stevens tell his story. It is truly remarkable. I must watch it again...

A woman crawls through an underfloor space that's been caked and slathered with human decay and excrement by the resident sex killer ... and then another woman continues the journey ... and another ... For 5 minutes I was thinking, Hmmm - an arty slasher short that stretches out for 80 mins. But I didn't look away from it once, and by the end it put a spell on me. Not a word of dialogue in this film, and it turns out actresses may be more expressive that way. I've noticed that occasionally - Ms.45 (1981)- but I think there's not even a verbal noise in this baby. How that's possible while maintaining the natural sound synchronicity is beyond me. Sound and music are excellent. They use freesound for the background radiation, but the editing takes it to another level. And there's a Tom Waits & wife feel to the actual music. Visuals are very visceral at the start, but they clean up and get more structured as it goes. The dinner party with the suckling pig is outright weird, but every scene is uniquely suited to its actress, and the actress to her scene. The only thing that took me out of it for a minute was the body suit in the sewing-up scene - not so much Is That Real? as Yeah, That's False. No biggie. The meaning? Dunno - there's plenty of metaphor if you like, but this is true horror - a mind-blowing observation of the inevitable. Above all, it's sympathetic - not hateful. Enjoy.

Flowers