FrightFest review – Flush
Long-time FrightFesterers will be delighted to note that after Stalled (2013) and Ach du Scheisse! (Holy Shit, 2022) this is the third FF selection set entirely in a toilet – and to make it worse, it’s one of those French hole-in-the-floor jobs.
Luc (R. Jonathan Lambert) nips into a stall in a seedy club in order to do some blow off his phone before nagging his ex Val (Elodie Navarre) to leave her bartending job for a few hours to see their daughter on her birthday. Plainly, he’s already on his last nerve – and while arguing with her over the phone, he gets his foot temporarily stuck in the hole … which brings in drug dealer Dindon (Rémy Adriaens), who has concealed his stash down there, leading to Luc making a very bad decision which prompts Dindon’s short-fused PTSD-suffering boss Sam (Elliot Jenicot) to shove Luc’s head through the hole, leaving him for dead and with a bellyful of cocaine baggies. This is all in the opening act, and things get considerably worse for Luc – and, as it happens, the rest of the small cast, thereafter … with pretty much every awful thing you could imagine taking place in a crapper happening to the not-unlikeable but obviously on-his-last-chance-with-everyone-in-his-life protagonist.
It’s a tight 70 minutes, which is probably just as well – and the camera gets to peer at every corner of the stall, and the drain underneath where Luc’s head is at. It struggles towards some sort of bleak happy resolution, but is more focused on abusing Luc – who loses a lot more than a shoe over the course of the film, with some gory physical effects. Man of the match is Rabla the drug addicted rat. Written by David Neiss. Directed by Grégory Morin.
Here’s the FrightFest listing.
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