★★★☆☆
A woman inherits a desert nursery and learns its flowers have a taste for blood, in this modern-day Little Shop of Horrors played dead straight.
Stefan Colson, following his indie Lookout, joins the small but potent tradition of daytime horror, the sun-baked lineage of The Wicker Man, Texas Chain Saw and Midsommar, where the scares arrive in bright Arizona light. Lily (Meghan Carrasquillo) inherits her late great-aunt’s struggling desert nursery and throws herself into reviving it. The garden responds, and so does she: it turns out these plants have a taste for blood, and tending them becomes an addiction for anyone who leans in too close. Before long Lily is no longer green-fingered but red-handed. Picture the original Little Shop of Horrors with the songs and the jokes stripped out, played as a straight psychological creeper.
The strongest note here is how sensual it all is. Shot on a real working nursery, with cinematographer Sam Wilkerson lavishing attention on sun, soil, sap and skin, the film makes the tending of living things feel close to erotic, the camera pressing in on dewed petals and dirt-caked hands until horticulture reads as appetite. Colson keeps it pacy and cleanly told, and Carrasquillo carries the film with an excellent lead turn, charting Lily’s slide from grief and duty into something like compulsion.
The film settles for a fairly basic payoff when the tactile, hungry build promises something nastier and stranger. Even so, as a lush, sinister riff on obsession, and a fine showcase for Carrasquillo, it works its way under the skin. Worth a look for anyone who likes their body count botanical and their flowers hungry for more than water.
Bloom played at Tubi FrightFest in London.