🚪 Locked Rooms, Family Secrets & One Deeply Traumatizing Attic
Release Date: 8/19/25
Runtime: 01:34
⚠️ Content Warning
Before we get into this episode, please note: Flowers in the Attic includes themes of child abuse, psychological trauma, incest, and child death. While we approach the film with our usual mix of irreverence and nostalgia, we want to acknowledge how disturbing the source material truly is. If any of these topics are difficult for you, we fully support you skipping this episode and joining us again next time—for something much less horrifying. Promise.
🛎️ Episode Overview
This week, we’re unlocking the attic door on one of the most haunting films of the 1980s: Flowers in the Attic (1987). Based on the V.C. Andrews novel that somehow ended up in everyone’s middle school backpack, this film adaptation brings all the unsettling, gothic drama of the book—minus most of the incest, but plus some baffling choices.
We break down what works (spoiler: not much), what scarred us for life, and why this story refuses to die, despite decades of questionable remakes and weirdly dedicated fandoms.
🎬 Movie Synopsis
After the sudden death of their father, four children—Chris, Cathy, and twins Cory and Carrie—are whisked away by their mother Corrine to her family’s sprawling estate. There, they’re hidden away in the attic by their religious zealot grandmother, who’s still furious about Corrine’s marriage to her own half-uncle.
What follows is years of confinement, betrayal, powdered donuts, and one very unexpected bridal veil death scene.
⭐ Cast & Characters
- Louise Fletcher – The Grandmother
(Oscar winner for One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, chilling here as ever.) - Victoria Tennant – Corrine, the Worst Mother of the Year™
(Of The Winds of War miniseries fame.) - Kristy Swanson – Cathy
(Future Buffy the Vampire Slayer and ’80s teen icon.) - Jeb Stuart Adams – Chris
(Also appeared in The Goonies.)
🎥 Behind the Scenes
- Filming Locations:
- Foxworth Hall scenes were shot at Castle Hill in Ipswich, Massachusetts
- That unforgettable finale was filmed at Greystone Mansion in Beverly Hills
- Release Date: November 20, 1987
- Box Office: $15.2 million (opened at #3 in the U.S.)
- Accolades:
- Kristy Swanson won a Young Artist Award in 1989
- Louise Fletcher earned a Saturn Award nomination
💬 What Critics Said
- Rotten Tomatoes: 18%
- Audience Score: 50%
- Critics’ Consensus: Lifeless acting. Dead air. A narrative that crawls.
📉 TV Guide: “Incredibly tame and downright boring.”
📉 The Washington Post: “Slow, stiff, stupid, and senseless.”
📉 Time Out London: “More likely to reduce an audience to laughter than to tears.”
Yikes.
🧠 Themes We Discuss
- Gothic horror through the lens of 1980s Lifetime aesthetics
- The erasure of the novel’s darker plot lines (a.k.a. the Incest-But-Make-It-MPG edit)
- What the hell was the plan, Corrine??
- Why this story won’t go away—despite remakes, sequels, and endless discomfort
- Justice for the attic children (but mostly for us having to rewatch this)
👀 Final Verdict
Creepy, claustrophobic, and soapy in all the wrong places, Flowers in the Attic is one of those movies that somehow left a cultural scar—and we couldn’t not talk about it. Whether you devoured the book at 13 or blocked it out completely, consider this your nostalgic re-traumatization… with commentary.
