Review of Flow 2024

I approached Flow with high expectations based on its marketing and glowing reviews, particularly regarding its visuals. Unfortunately, it fell short of these promises. The animation, though praised for it's style, felt outdated reminiscing of a role-playing video game back from 2012. While the limited budget was outlined by many, objective ratings should compare Flow to the leaders in the industry, like Dinsey or Pixar.

The film started with intriguing ideas and concepts, but I found it to lack depth and development. It focused heavily on illustrating the flow of life and nature without offering meaningful character arcs and development, to me it felt too superficial. In my opinion stories should engage, inspire, and challenge it's viewers or readers, but again Flow remained superficial and repetitive. Furthermore, it struggled to define its target audience, too slow, long and abstract for children, yet too shallow for adults. This left it in a no-man's land, catering to neither side.

I was really excited for the absence of dialogue, but it felt like a let down. Watching the film felt like a chore, without any emotional payoff. It sure was worth seeing once for curiosity, but I wouldn't watch it again. I'd rate the film give or take a 5-6/10. I think Flow is a film you definitely want to watch in the cinema, and not on your TV.

To be clear, I'm not a professional critic, and the point of this post isn't to bash or devalue the film, I think they did a great job for the shoestring budget they had, but these are my honest thoughts questioning the "glowing" reviews Flow has received.

PS: I didn't love how the dogs were portrayed. Gints is probably a cat person, haha.