A story that's too fascinating to pass by...

The joyful confection is coated in a sparkly gloss, bright enough to gleam from the darkest, most cynical corners.

While it is a pity that the story wasn't told with more visual finesse, this is trivial compared to our real-world problems. It takes a good movie to put that into perspective.

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

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 2015Writer & 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 this8 and a half outta 10

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.

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.