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.

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.

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-penis.

Pretty vile, but has it's moments. And way more disgusting than the Nekromantik films.

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.

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.