Flora: Eco-horror
If you love the sub-genre of eco-horror films and science fiction, consider Canada’s 2017 independent venture, Flora.
Written, produced, and directed by Sasha Luis Vukovic, Flora follows a group of university student botanists into an unchartered forest. The year is 1929, and they are off to connect with their professors and other researchers – but when they arrive, they find the campsite empty…
Low-budget Beauty
With a $100,000 micro-budget, the cast and crew worked damn hard to create a compelling and dramatic mystery/horror from scratch.
Yes, Flora has its faults, but they are minor and forgiving when considering the difficulty of shooting outdoors for the entire shoot – and it’s a period piece, no less.
The forest and other exterior elements work extremely well, providing an enormous venue that makes the botanists seem not only small but completely surrounded. They are isolated to say the least, and whatever nightmare they must face, they will face alone.
This creates a crushing atmosphere in Flora, thanks to director of cinematography Erik Irvin. He used a bevy of wide shots to continually make us feel alone with the group in a grand vista of green.
In addition, the sound team did an excellent job, and Erica Gulliver’s film edits are spot on.
The Flora crew ultimately made this look like a film with a much larger budget, and it pays off.
Character Interactions
One may question some of the interactions between men and women of the era, including the presence of Dan Lin’s Matsudaira Basho as a Japanese student, who seems to suffer no ill will from his white compatriots.
Then again, Japan had a recent alliance with the United States and Canada during the often forgotten “Reds vs Whites” war following the October Revolution in 1918. The Canadian Siberian Expeditionary Force took part in an effort to overthrow the communist regime. Maybe this was enough to forego excessive racism.
In addition, after World War I, there was a sort of women’s revolution following the conflict. As with World War II, women took up some of the male-dominated workload while the men were at the front. This led to many women wanting a lot more than being barefoot and pregnant in the western world, so seeing female scientists finding respect at the end of the Jazz era may not be so startling.
In Flora, Ora Blackwood (Teresa Marie Doran) and Avis Tasker (Sari Mercer) make up the female portion of the team, and contribute as much as any other male counterpart.
Miles G. Jackson and Caleb Noel round out this strong cast, and like most other cast members, served double duty as producers or crew members.
One of Vukovic’s best writing elements was to not include an overt romantic arc that would whittle down the tension. Then again, in Flora he created strong characters the audience can care about. There are no “red shirts” in this bunch and no flat, stock personas.
Pressure
For a small film, Flora covers a lot of ground. Our scientists go through a green Hell to find the remaining team and to thwart a botanical threat they are only beginning to wrap their collective heads around.
With the vast landscape and the archaic equipment at their disposal, a feeling of absolute helplessness pervades Flora from stem to bloom. This alone makes for a compelling adventure thanks to dramatic tension as well as the weight of the circumstances.
After watching Flora, one may think twice about that first step into unchartered territory…
One can only imagine what Vukovic’s next cinematic adventure will be, but there’s no doubt it will be a compelling, intelligent, and gripping ride.
4 out of 5 stars
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Billy Crash
Also known as William D. Prystauk, he loves great, in-depth characters and storytelling in horror, and likes to see heads roll, but if you kill a dog on screen he’ll cry like a baby. Crash, an award-winning screenwriter and novelist, co-hosts THE LAST KNOCK horror podcast on iTunes, and can also be found on Twitter, LinkedIn, IMDb, Amazon, Behance, YouTube, and Instagram. He’s currently in pre-production on a dramatic thriller feature while working on the third novel in his #KinkNoir crime thriller series.
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