Considering its taboo subject matter it's still stunning to me that most people my age read V.C. Andrew's "Flowers in the Attic" at a pretty young age. Perhaps we didn't understand the underlying themes of incest at the time but, looking back on it now, it's just so wrong. Having been filmed before in 1987, this version coming seventeen years later marks my first foray into the wasteland that is films produced for the female focused Lifetime network and if them tackling such a sleazy, sibling sex laden pot-boiler like this is any indication, it will probably be my last - and that's taking into consideration they made a Lizzie Borden movie and mini-series starring Christina Ricci as the axe wielding psychopath.

After some early idyllic scenes setting up a happy family, things start going wrong. First of all teenage daughter Cathy (Kiernan Shipka) seems to always be upset and, along with her three siblings, is about to be shuffled off to live with their domineering grandmother (Ellen Burstyn) after dad dies in a car accident and their newly widowed mother (Heather Graham) is having difficulty making ends meet.

Cathy, her brother Christopher (Mason Dye), and twin younger kin are soon under the steely gaze of their ball-busting granny with her strict rules and unseen threat of their supposedly mean grandfather. They're tossed into a room in the attic, mom is constantly sniped at by grandmother before she disappears only to show up once in a while to tell them she loves them and all about how her life is so much better now, and they are constantly a target of the elderly family matriarch and her over-the-top religious fanaticism and tendency to call them "evil". Yes, the innocent kids are locked in the attic, hence the title.

There's a ton of scenes with characters looking on using lots of concerned stares or empty glances and this takes over an hour before the really creepy incest creeps into the story (Yes, it's consensual, but shit man...) which makes 2014's Flowers in the Attic dull at best. It gets most of its traction from Burstyn. When she's not around going completely off the rails this plays out like a bland soap opera filled with mediocre young actors. Plus it simply ends without any resolution which, I suppose, makes sense since Lifetime felt it necessary to make three(!) sequels that aired in a fifteen month span - Petals on the Wind being the first.

Given that they have to hold down much of the movie, Shipka and Dye could have been worse. They're not at all convincing in their roles and, when they do get down to the dirty business, it doesn't have a lot of icky impact as I was never convinced they were related. Graham continues to prove that Boogie Nights might have been a fluke as she starts off weak and gets worse as things go along. Ava Telek is absolutely horrible as the female side of our twins and is a shining example of why most of us dislike child actors. This, bar none, is Burstyn's show and she chews scenery up. She hits an over-the-top lunacy much like Louise Fletcher (Oscar winner for One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest!) did in the 1987 version. Speaking of that version, I definitely found Victoria Tennant's mother and Kristy Swanson's Cathy to be more engaging.

If the two filmed versions of V.C. Andrew's now infamous gothic junker novel do anything it makes me curious to revisit a book I really shouldn't have been reading so young. I also find it mind-blowing that, to this very day, they are still publishing novels under her name - as ghost written by Andrew Neiderman since she passed away in 1986. I suppose fans of such lowbrow writing might enjoy this. As for the rest of us, unless you want to be bored or get some very, very wrong thrill out of incest there's really no reason to watch this. (Chris Hartley, 12/1/15)

Directed By: Deborah Chow.
Written By: Kayla Alpert.

Starring: Heather Graham, Kiernan Shipka, Mason Dye, Ava Telek.