Flow (2024)
A video game cutscene you can’t skip.
Presentation:
It was quite surprising to see in the first few seconds that this 2024 film has already been preserved by the Criterion Collection. Being entirely created within Blender, it definitely marks a technological achievement in filmmaking. Unfortunately I found the image quality to be shockingly disappointing. You can see the polygons and jagged edges with the dogs looking particularly shoddy. If you’ve seen Unreal Engine demos or video game cutscenes I think they even look better than this. But I suppose many will love the idea of this film and give it brownie points for what is likely a CGI render time that probably took months.
Conclusion:
For a film praised for CGI achievement I expected something more impressive. Considering where the levels of animation have reached with Spiderman: Across the Spiderverse or anime, I was severely underwhelmed. The story is decent without any dialogue, but nothing revolutionary if you’ve finished a modern video game like Stray (2022) with a cinematic cutscene. The way the animals carry personalities through their movement is impressive, but not really worth a watch by yourself in my opinion. This should be great to leave on for the kids.
Recommendations
Poetry comes from the unlikeliest of drivers.