Movie Info
Movie Name: Flowers in the Attic
Studio: Cue the Dog Productions
Genre(s): Drama
Release Date(s): January 18, 2014
MPAA Rating: Not Rated
So…this could be fun for a few years, right?
The Dollanganger family seems perfect…and everyone even calls them the Dresden Dolls due to their perfect shiny look. When their father Christopher (Chad Willett) is killed, Corrine (Heather Graham) reveals to Chris (Mason Dye), Cathy (Kiernan Shipka), Cory (Maxwell Kovach), and Carrie (Ava Telek) that they are actually the Foxworth family and destine to inherit the Foxworth fortune if Corrine can once again get herself in her father’s will. Travelling to Virginia, Chris, Cathy, Cory, and Carrie learn they must remain hidden in a room while Corrine woos her father and only Corrine and her hateful mother Olivia (Ellen Burstyn) know of their existence. Cathy, Chris, Corey, and Carrie have access to the home massive attic where they can play, but as the time passes and things change, Cathy and Chris find their feelings changing…and Grandmother reveals she sees the sin of their parents in them!
No, we’re just uncomfortable because of the bad dialogue…
Directed by Deborah Chow, Flowers in the Attic is a 2014 Lifetime TV movie adaptation of the first novel in V.C. Andrews classic Dollanganger series which began with Flowers in the Attic in 1979. The film had previously been brought to the big screen in 1987, and though more faithful to the source material, the film was still criticized.
When I was little, my sister was a huge Flowers in the Attic fan. As an avid reader, I actually read the original series, and I can say that the soapy, cheesy, and somewhat filthy books were fun little reads though not very good. We saw the first film in the theater (which toned down some of the themes), but it was goofy…this film suffers from the same problems.
I’m bored…want to explore each other’s bodies?
The dialogue of the movie is awful and it is paired with one of the strangest stories in literature (the term lightly used here). Flowers in the Attic is by no means a great novel, but it does a great job combining romance and gothic horror in a simple enjoyable package. The weirdness is how a story about incest and romance became popular. The first version of the film didn’t deal much with the incest between brother and sister Chris and Cathy, but this version is closer. Unfortunately, when it is played out by actors in a live script, you can see how bad it really is.
The movie did a good job casting, but the actors are wasted on source material which is below them. Heather Graham and Ellen Burstyn for the most part struggle with the clunky dialogue and try to make the characters their own with semi-success. The real stars are Mad Man’s Kiernan Shipka and Mason Dye as Cathy and Chris. They actually fare a bit better than their better known costars but also have more rounded characters to portray.
Alright the sexual tension is broken!!! Wait, what’s happening here…ugh
The movie still looks cheap. The grand Foxworth Estate looks less grand here than in the original film and the movie sets just don’t carry any weight. These bad decisions combine with the bad script for less than stellar results.
Flowers in the Attic is smarmy trope, but there is something still somewhat enjoyable about the simple weirdness of the story. It takes all sorts of cliché storylines and combines them into something watchable (and fortunately only ninety minutes). It isn’t good but it is fun. Flowers in the Attic is followed by the sequel Petals on the Wind also released in 2014.
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