A down-and-out man is stuck in a toilet at a nightclub in the French single-room thriller, Flush, directed by Gregory Morin and presented through the Fantasia International Film Festival.
Luc is already in a bad situation. It’s his daughter’s birthday. She’s been fostered by his parents since he and his ex are both ne’er-do-wells. He finds out where the ex-girlfriend works to convince her to visit their daughter. It’s a skeezy nightclub, run by skeezy people. Because he can’t help himself, a bump of cocaine sends him to the bathroom. For reasons, which of course I don’t spoil, he ends up stuck in a toilet in the basement and on the bad side of the club owner and a drug dealer. Flush, directed by Gregory Morin (in his first feature), and written by David Neiss, is a quick and nasty slice of increasing tension, blood, and working through a wild, weird film.
I appreciate how tight Flush is. Morin brings the film in at a mere 70 minutes. True, it may seem short, but it packs so much into that limited scope thanks to Morin, and the script by Neiss (though we don’t know much was cut from script to screen). Flush moves at million-miles-a-minute with an energy matching the cocaine high of our lead. Fitting, bringing the audience to the same pitch of panic as the protagonist.
What is found is a “single room, things are bad, can it get worse? Oh yes, yes, it can in brutal, bloody, and wild ways,” thriller. Flush has a great build as each obstacle is presented, built upon, and attempted to be solved, only for the next complication to muff any victory. The trials and travails of Luc’s escape from the greasy, grimy, and graffiti-covered loo are a hell of a ride.
I was impressed with how many obstacles, switches, and interactions Neiss was able to pull out of the confined space. It’s not my nature to tell you what those turns, obstacles, bloody bits, and ways out are. But I can say I voiced a great deal of “oh no” “s, hard laughs, and many silent grimaces.
Jonathan Lambert as Luc holds it all together with aplomb, lending a loser like Luc a likable bend. To follow someone like him so long, as he’s in all scenes, he would have to be. His desperation and manic energy drive the frantic push. There is a great phsycialilty ot his performance, an insane intensity.
Gregory Morin, in his first feature after a series of well-received shorts, provides the gross-out grime with creative uses of the confined space. One can think there’s little to explore in a toilet and its underpinnings, but Morin knows just where to put and how to cut to keep it interesting. Whether it be animals, other people, cut faces, or the general issues of being high in the locked room, he brings Luc’s issues to a fever pitch. And he maintains it, a tough sell, done wonderfully.
Flush is an impressive, tight, grotesque, single-room, small-cast thriller. Jonathan Lambert gives a fantastic, frantic performance in the middle of Gregory Morin’s aptly controlled skill in a small location in Flush.
Flush is presented through the Fantasia Film Festival, which ran July 16th, through August 3rd 2025.