Flow Review

A Changing World

Last year, I played the video game Stray, which featured an orange cat lead as they adventure through a walled-in city filled with dangerous robots. The game was unique because you played a realistic cat traversing this lonely dystopian Blade Runner metropolis, not a cartoon or human-like cat. It moved, meowed, purred, napped, and slowly knocked things off shelves like a cat. Playing through the game as you uncover the secrets of this lost world, you immediately can tell the developers have a deep affection for cats and went the extra mile to give care to its every detail.

(Stray video game for context)

Watching Gints Zilbalodis' Flow, I could immediately tell that the team that worked to craft this stunning film deeply loved animals, especially their pets. Like Stray, Flow is doing more of a surrealist take on its animal characters, but having them all treated this way helped raise the stakes. We become immediately invested in the journey of its main black cat and its eventual gang of comrades as they try to venture across a dangerous and foreboding land being consumed by water. Visually, Flow is a wonderful painting brought to life with some incredible tense sequences that had me on the edge of my seat. The sweeter and more moving moments made my heart so full, especially with its excellent score that swells up your heart and deepens your connection to the characters.

Flow follows a black cat, seeking higher ground as the world around them floods rapidly. On the way, they are joined by a labrador, a Capybara, a lemur, and a large secretarybird as they voyage together on a boat. They try to work together to survive this harsh world and each other's distinct personalities. They go on an epic adventure, learning about friendship and how to trust and believe in one another.

Flow is a visual masterpiece with a style inspired by video games but with a unique artistic touch. The amount of personality put into all the animals, especially their subtle movements, is so incredible that you can read the minds or know precisely how each feels at any given moment. All the sounds of the animals are distinct but so realistic in how you feel as though they would react to the situations presented to them. The film's worldbuilding is a quiet but fascinating aspect, where we see mossy-covered statues, buildings, temples, and shrines that belong to other beings scattered across the world, making you wonder what could have happened to this land that seems to have been left behind. Our obsession with lost or inhabited civilizations is fascinating, even if it might be our own—so many awe-inspiring vistas in Flow.

The direction here is incredible. Several intense sequences where the camera (I know it's animation and not a real camera) is following our main cat through perilous moments, swimming in the water or being flown through the air, take your breath away. The moment that left my jaw on the floor when it came to just the power of what animation can pull off is this beautiful ascension up this mountain, and we see the black cat and birds share in this magical moment in the air. It's stunning visually and one of the most heartfelt scenes in the entire film. There are devastating scenes involving the consequences of climate change, but the film is filled with so much hope and joy that it balances the two quite nicely. I must highlight Flow's fantastic score and how it can be exhilarating in more action scenes but so serene and moving in others that it is doing some nice elevating here in Flow.

Flow is a fantastic film suitable for all ages. Parents should be grateful that a movie showcasing the challenges of friendship and trust and highlighting climate change is currently in theaters. Flow is a love letter to cats, animals, animation, and the world we all share. It is a film with no dialogue that will leave you speechless.

Final Score: 8.5/10

Written by Kevin J. Pettit

Stray was about an orange cat I have; his name is Theo. Flow is about my most recent black cat, JJ (Jean Jacket, named after the alien in Jordan Peele's Nope). So, I am heavily biased in this review as a cat lover, but Flow is by far the best animated film I've seen in 2024.