As has often been said, blood is thicker than water – but it’s certainly equally true that it’s usually your family that can do the most harrowing damage to one’s psyche. Hopefully, very few of us felt the betrayal and abandonment of an unloving domestic situation, but unfortunately, they do exist and can heavily influence the trajectory of someone’s life. This subject is covered extensively in Flowers in the Attic, the first in a series of books by V. C. Andrews, which explores the relationship between various members of the Dollanganger family, namely consisting of mother Corinne and her four children who are forced to travel to Virginia, where they are to stay with her mother and dying father. The children are taken by surprise when they are locked in a room in some hidden corner of the sprawling mansion and told that they are to remain out of sight of the patriarch until his death, as their mother is insistent on repairing their broken relationship in the hopes of regaining her inheritance. Under the strict, draconian watch of their brutal, sadistic grandmother, the children gradually piece together the events that led to this moment, unearthing some dark family secrets that they all agree should have remained hidden, especially since it paints a bleak portrait of their future. A fascinating work of gothic horror that has been translated into a film version by Jeffrey Bloom, Flowers in the Attic has a lot of potential but ultimately squanders it in ways that we may not have initially expected, especially considering the calibre of talent working on both sides of the camera, leading to an experience that is mediocre at the best of times, and outright frustrating in its ineptitude to meet its endless possibilities at the worst.

The appeal of Flowers in the Attic, both as a novel and a film, is directly related to its subject matter, which is steeped heavily in discussions around the role family plays in defining (and sometimes challenging) your identity and changing the course of your life in ways that we may not initially expect when it comes to those with whom we are supposed to have strong, fully-formed relationships. Andrews cobbled together quite an interesting story of a quartet of children who are unwittingly shoved into an attic, where they are to remain indefinitely. It’s not a particularly logical story for the most part (and there are many inconsistencies in how it makes certain scenarios seem far more dramatic than they needed to be), but it does have the potential to be quite intriguing, even if only on a superficial level. The allure of gothic horror is not difficult to understand – there is something very effective about stories of sprawling mansions filled with seemingly endless corridors that conceal deep secrets that are as intriguing as they are terrifying, and Flowers in the Attic certainly does make sure that we are aware of these components as it traverses many of these ideas with a fascinating precision that makes it quite compelling, even when some of it isn’t particularly memorable or leads us down paths that don’t have many resolutions. To its credit, the book was written with younger readers in mind, so any inconsistencies or deficiencies as far as touching on the more horrifying side of the story can be understood through the perspective of this being essentially an entry-point for young adults to gothic fiction. The film, however, seems to depend too much on the surface-level premise rather than doing anything particularly noteworthy as far as examining the connections between this family and their efforts to stand united despite the obstacles that stand in their way, one of the many shortcomings of this adaptation.

As time has progressed, the one aspect of Flowers in the Attic that people seem to remember is the casting, mainly the roles of the two villains of the film. Louise Fletcher, who built an entire career out of playing these matronly, sour-faced authority figures who were far more sinister than they had any right to be, is captivating as the family matriarch who rules this mansion and its inhabitants with an iron fist, being quite a memorable villain, albeit one we never truly manage to understand, which we can attribute to a deliberate choice to make her a more ambigious character. Conversely, Victoria Tennant plays the mother of the children who find themselves locked away in this mansion, and we learn slightly too much about her character – but mercifully, Tennant understands the parameters of the role exceptionally well, having the ability to oscillate between being naive and malicious depending on what has been revealed. Unfortunately, this is where the praise for the cast stops, which is doubly frustrating considering the only two good performances in the film come from the supporting cast, with the four leads delivering meagre performances at the best of times, each one of them having severe flaws – Kristy Swanson is too shrill to be the de facto protagonist, being poorly developed despite being the central perspective through which the events of the film are seen, while Jeb Stuart Adams is about a decade too old to play the role of the eldest child, which is demonstrated in both his physical appearance and his complete lack of convincing qualities as a teenager. The two younger children are, unfortunately, the least-developed of the characters, essentially acting as devices to move the plot forward rather than being given much attention as far as infusing them with any discernible qualities. The cast is ultimately a mixed bag, and a more precise approach to the characterisation may have yielded far more convincing results.

The areas in which Flowers in the Attic falters become clear from the very start – this is a film that attempts to compress an entire novel, including all of its nuances and historical context, into a single 90-minute narrative, which is always going to be less-than-ideal, especially in terms of how the film addresses some of its more complex ideas, many of which were entirely removed when adapting from the novel. This is an extremely meandering film in which the premise feels limited and supremely uninteresting despite the promise of the novel. Unfortunately, the director seems to be far too insistent on creating something that he hopes delivers the same emotional impact but without any of the intricate details that would make it genuinely interesting. The film struggles with all of its emotions, not knowing how to define its characters and their reactions at any given moment, which creates a massively inconsistent bundle of ideas that ultimately amount to very little and leave us somewhat cold midway through once we realise that it isn’t going to get anywhere particularly notable. Bloom steers away from the horror-based nature of the story – it was arguably not written to be terrifying but rather enveloped in a sense of quiet dread and unsettling sadness, neither of which emerge in any of the film’s pivotal moments. Instead, Flowers in the Attic chooses to be overwrought, focusing on all the wrong elements in its pursuit to tell this story, but not putting so much as an ounce of effort into making it feel realistic and interesting, which is utterly unforgivable, considering the nature of the material and how it functions within the context of this narrative, failing to meet even the most fundamental goals.

Flowers in the Attic was already not considered the definition of highbrow literature, with the pulpy source material being more akin to mildly entertaining than actually insightful or moving. However, this adaptation feels even less precise, being deeply unnerving and disconcerting in entirely unintentional ways. Ultimately, this is a film that needed a much stronger authorial voice at the helm, someone who could transform a solid but unremarkable text into something truly worth watching, extracting its fundamental themes and developing them to feel at least somewhat daring. The film is simply an inconsistent, meandering jumble of ideas in which we can see some promise in a few scenes (such as the first voyage into the titular attic) but which squanders all of it with a deeply unnerving, often quite dull examination of ideas that would have been better served if helmed by a director who knew how to extract the inherent sense of atmospheric, tense horror film a premise that was begging to be given to someone with a more clear and consistent vision. It isn’t entirely a waste of time, as there are some good elements scattered throughout (and if nothing else, it is worth it for Fletcher’s stellar performance), but as a whole, Flowers in the Attic is a major misfire and a film that didn’t do much in terms of honouring its source material.