The Lifetime network takes a walk on the dark side. Flowers In The Attic is one of those books that is so bad it’s good, if your into that kind of thing. It’s the tale of tortured children, incest, and bible thumping. The Lifetime movie gives us hints that there’s even more to this tale than meets the eye, so I’m guessing they might have plans to make one or two more movies from the gazillion books written or inspired by V.C. Andrews.
We start off with the perfect family, Mom and Dad and four children. Dad dies suddenly and Mom has to go back to live with her evil parents, who happen to be mind numbingly rich. But she can’t let her father know about her children, so the four of them are locked into a room with two beds and access to a large attic filled with old junk. For the next three years we see the world through the eyes of the children as they go about the business of trying to stay alive and stave off boredom. Good luck with that.
It’s hard for me to feel too much pity for these kids. Why don’t they get something out of the attic and beat the evil people who have imprisoned them over the head? Why don’t they set fire to the house? Why don’t they just escape once it’s clear that their mother is also demon spawn? Why don’t any of these people think incest is a bad thing? And so on and so forth.
Flowers in the Attic has nice sets, but I’m afraid I didn’t much like any of the actors. I didn’t hate the Grandmother and I didn’t feel pity for the kids. The Mother was good and evil and needed to be shot, but the only hint that she might be punished for her evil deeds was a mysterious line in the closing scene that said the children and mother would meet again one day.
Maybe you have to be a 14 year old girl to really appreciate this movie. A 14 year old girl with a crush on her brother.
