Review: ‘Thorns for Flowers’ pricks the skin

You can bind the past, lock it away and pray it never escapes, but it always does. It’s a carnivorous beast of its own volition, and time is its only enemy. Eventually, it all comes back around, and a heavy price must be paid. Thorns for Flowers – written and directed by Anthony De Lioncourt – buries the viewer six-feet deep in a tragic, poetic, and lavishly-shot story about one man’s psychological shackles and the barriers through which he must break. It’s a 90-minute banquet of hyper-stylized visual storytelling, set in the 1970s, and each frame feels important. It’s an immersive experience, and De Lioncourt’s direction evokes both dread and whimsy.

Vance Clemente (Reprieve, Inscriptions) plays the wayward, eccentric medium named Leo, whose harrowing past, explored in flashbacks, taking up a significant portion of the second act, rears its ugly head and nearly consumes him. When he’s employed to help local detectives hunt down a serial killer preying on women, his supernatural, dream-seeking gifts are put to the ultimate test. Meanwhile, a woman named Catherine (Samantha Strelitz, known for Red Dead Redemption II and DieRy), currently being protected by law enforcement following her own capture three years prior, becomes the killer’s likely next target. Catherine and Leo strike up an unlikely romance; her the siren-like beauty, him the long-haired beast. They bond over past traumas, often traipsing through the woodlands, and it’s evident they balance each other out. Catherine possesses a lively, wondrous eye, while Leo closes himself off from such perceived nonsense.

De Lioncourt is a visionary, framing each story beat with supple detail in his framework and building expansive, lived-in worlds, and he has a knack of drowning the viewer in opulence. Where his previous effort When We Dance the Music Dies twists the needles on trauma, death, and recovery, Thorns for Flowers embeds a grueling slow-burn into the back of the skull – exploring trauma in a vastly different way. Often times, Thorns reads as an Anton Chekov play; nothing particularly thrilling happens in the present (even various abductions of other women feel muted) but there is something mesmeric unraveling through intimate character work. Strelitz and Clemente ground the piece, steady, unfussy performances, even when the script often feels a bit too scant.

Thorns for Flowers works best set in the past. Particular personal catastrophes offer great emotional insight into Leo’s demure demeanor, and he becomes a fascinating case study into suppressed traumas. Too, there emerges a hypnotic quality that is downright difficult to pin down – and the final act’s revelations are, ultimately, worth the price of admission.

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