By Robert Scucci | Published
Every once in a while I come across a low-budget film that’s getting polarizing reviews, and I want to see if I’m the kind of person willing to appreciate the project for what it is, or if I’m just going to rip it apart like I could do something better (spoiler: I can’t). When Reddit user u/IamGodHimself2 boldly proclaimed that 2017 The flow was the scariest movie they’d ever seen, I had my doubts – especially when I read every comment calling the film a self-indulgent, low-budget college project with shoddy camerawork and very little of gains.
The naysayers aren’t necessarily wrong in their assessment, but you can’t watch movies made for an estimated $3,000 with the same lens with which you watch bigger budget horror movies, because experimental films like The flow have obvious limitations that you should ignore that bigger productions and their viewers take for granted.
If I had to describe The flow in a single sentence, I would say: “It’s an atmosphere”.
Not much
The flow spends most of its runtime in Stephanie’s (Brittany Dunk) apartment, and thanks to a radio show, we get most of the exposition we need to know. As a long tracking shot follows Stephanie through her house, the radio states that her boyfriend David recently committed suicide by stabbing himself dozens of times and gouging out his eyes. According to the show, no foul play is suspected.
After establishing its isolated atmosphere, The flow introduces Sarah (Gloria Bueno), who visits out of concern for her best friend. Through some of the film’s only dialogue, it becomes clear that Stephanie’s grief has made her a recluse, causing her to lose her job while severing most of her close relationships as she attempts to make sense of the death of her boyfriend. During this brief exchange, Stephanie tells Sarah that David started acting like a totally different person after becoming obsessed with live streaming a man lying in a coffin before his untimely and grisly death.
To make things even more disturbing, Stephanie reveals to Sarah that she’s been receiving voicemails from David despite the fact that she unplugged his phone a few days ago.
A seemingly infinite loop
Showing its namesake, The flow leads Stephanie and Sarah to David’s office, where the live broadcast is still going on. David’s notes suggest that he cannot stop looking at the stream or the man in the coffin will chase him. Sarah has a seizure and locks herself in the bathroom in a panic after recovering. As Stephanie knocks on the bathroom door, her doorbell rings and she finds Sarah at the front door as if nothing had happened.
Stephanie finds herself trapped in a terrifying time loop involving David’s corpse chasing her and archived footage of the stream leaving her with subtle clues to its origin.
A disturbing and simple story
Listen, I’ll be the first person to tell you The flow is a completely amateur hour-long film – not counting the extremely long 15-minute post-credits sequence, the film is literally an hour long, and writer/director Isaac Rodriguez (best known for his YouTube channel “No Sleep”) n clearly didn’t have a lot of resources to bring this film to life. Despite the film’s limitations, the long tracking camera shots that make up most of the film will get under your skin as the color palette continually shifts from normal to an ominous bright red, then to blue saturations that consume your field of vision like a demon. or demons, run wild in Stephanie’s apartment.
The entirety of The flow plays out as if an unknown entity is behind the camera, following Stephanie’s every move while she is completely unaware of its presence. Feeling more like a series of terrifying vignettes stitched together for the purpose of telling a ghost story, I would call The flow a solid proof of concept from a promising horror author who has the innate ability to use the “less is more” approach while delivering a form of existential dread that the Paranormal Activity franchise failed to deliver reproduce after his first film became a fugitive. success despite production budgets increasing with each subsequent episode of the series.
I’m not saying that The flow is the best horror movie I’ve ever seen, but I have to give it credit because there are some truly terrifying sequences and scares that made me go “ugh!” on more than one occasion.
As of this writing, you can watch The flow for free on Tubi, the one service I keep coming back to for its catalog of disjointed, experimental content that I can’t find on any paid streaming service.
