Flowers

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.

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

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.

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.