Movies
‘The Flood’ Review – Toothless Action Sidelines Creature Feature Mayhem
Borrowing a page from 2019’s Crawl, The Flood aims to escalate the thrills by pitting man-eating alligators against cops and prisoners in a flooded Louisiana jail amidst a raging hurricane. It’s a high concept scenario that lends itself well to action-horror thrills and B-movie fun. The Flood doesn’t quite follow through on execution, though. It’s not the rough effects that sink The Flood, but an overly convoluted plot that bogs down the runtime.
Louisiana sheriff Jo Newman (Nicky Whelan) already has enough on her plate, trying to corral her officers into preparing the leaking police station from further storm damage during a ferocious hurricane. Then she receives a phone call announcing the unexpected arrival of a prison transport bus in dire need of temporary shelter for the night. Newman’s reluctance gets overruled, and she’s forced to contend with a group of dangerous convicts, including cop killer Russell Cody (Casper Van Dien). The mistrust between the eclectic group of strangers constantly threatens to erupt in violence, and that’s before rogue Rafe Calderon (Louis Mandylor) creates a dizzying plot to jailbreak Russell, and the alligators invade.
Directed by Brandon Slagle, working from a screenplay by Chad Law and Josh Ridgway, The Flood packs in the action tropes. The lone female amidst a sea of testosterone, Jo Newman constantly must prove herself with demonstrations of physical prowess and assertive cunning. She’s surrounded by dimwitted subordinates or violent criminals eager to knock her down a peg, save for sensitive cop killer Russell, of course. While both characters’ clear moral lines make them the apparent protagonists against a wave of stock baddie caricatures, The Flood wastes time attempting to flesh out various subplots for many of its fodder. This relegates the looming threat of alligators to the sidelines for most of the runtime and makes for a repetitious, overly complicated narrative as everyone fights for dominance.
That’s likely a result of budgetary constraints; it’s not just the rough effects work on the gators that distract, but the raging CGI storm outside also struggles to muster any sense of plausibility. Putting an emphasis on the human element makes sense. Except here, the human conflict is generic and overly complicated for a high concept thriller. Van Dien and Whelman fully commit and attempt to inject gravitas into stock characters. Still, neither their action chops nor attempts at pathos can elevate the frequently silly encounters they endure with one-note villains.
The Flood wears its patchwork of cinematic action influences on its sleeves but struggles to bridge them together in a cohesive and logical manner. The story touches on everything from Assault on Precinct 13 to even Point Break; all approached with a seriousness that belies the B-movie premise. That ultimately cuts to the crux of The Flood, an overly earnest yet generic action vehicle that shoehorns its creature feature horror into the mix when it must. It makes for an unfocused action vehicle that crumbles under the weight of rough creature mayhem, convoluted subplots, and a series of familiar story beats taken with utmost seriousness.
The Flood releases in Theaters, On Demand and Digital on July 14, 2023.
This piece was written during the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. Without the labor of the writers and actors currently on strike, the movie being covered here wouldn’t exist.
It’s been eight years since Ari Aster came onto the scene and helped usher in a new wave of horror with Hereditary, one of the rare horror movies from the past ten years that still seems to come up in conversation every single week. And it’s back in the conversation this week, with Ari Aster revealing at an event that he’s already written a prequel to Hereditary!
Ari Aster was on hand at the American Cinematheque for Bleak Week: Cinema of Despair last week, a Los Angeles festival that screened all of Aster’s movies to date. The website Gold Derby reports that Aster revealed the Hereditary prequel script during a Q&A at the event, and you can watch the full Q&A conversation below for confirmation on the website’s report.
“I wrote a prequel to this,” Aster told the crowd, referring to Hereditary. “It never feels like the right time to do it. It’s a prequel, not a sequel so I don’t know where this goes.”
Would a potential Hereditary prequel dig deeper into the mythology of demon king Paimon? Unfortunately, Aster provides no further details on his prequel approach at this time.
Aster said of Hereditary during the same Q&A, “I was just trying to make a really good horror movie.” I think most horror fans would agree that he more than accomplished that goal, and the past eight years have proven that Hereditary is an enduring classic of its generation.
We celebrated the fifth anniversary of Hereditary here on BD back in 2023.
Ron Breton wrote, “Hereditary offers a similar emotional resonance to this new generation of horror – my generation of horror– as movie-goers in the seventies when they first saw Exorcist. Much like Aster’s film, we see the incomprehensible evil wear the face of a young girl; the victim of a raw deal she had no say in, as it tears a family to its core. Sure, both films offer so many terrifying visuals that can make the hair stand up on anyone’s neck – but it also depicts intense relationships and emotions that are tangible. Real. Familiar.”
“In that familiarity lies the uncanny, ready to rear its ugly head and force us to confront thoughts and horrors laying dormant and clawing at our psyche,” Breton continued his 5th anniversary celebration of Hereditary. “And it doesn’t matter if it’s been five or fifty years. These horrors are always there, as we become pawns in its horrible, hopeless machine.”
Toni Collette, Gabriel Byrne, Alex Wolff, Ann Dowd, and Milly Shapiro star in Hereditary. In the film, “A grieving family is haunted by tragic and disturbing occurrences.”
That’s putting it mildly, eh?!
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