“THIS ONE’S DEFINITELY A FLOATER”
Main Cast: Kate Mayhew, Miguel Munez
Director: Zac Locke
Got 75 minutes, an internet connection, and absolutely NOTHING to do? You could always watch the 2022 movie FLOAT (or #FLOAT, depending on how pretentious you want to look), written and directed by Zac Locke (EP on the 2019 BLACK CHRISTMAS).
Or you could sit and stare at a wall and get almost the same amount of entertainment for those 75 minutes.
#FLOAT starts with the simplest of premises. A group of friends on an annual float trip, wanting to spread the ashes of their friend who recently died on the same river, are terrorized by an unseen force.
At least that’s what it’s supposed to be about.
What’s this movie really about?
About 60 minutes too long.
Thank you, thank you, I’ll be here all week.
#FLOAT centers around Kali (Kate Mayhew), whose goal is to be Instagram famous, to be an influencer, to get paid to try makeups and have millions of followers. So far she’s almost reached 200 and her biggest video has received 100 views.
Her boyfriend Jackson (Miguel Munez) is unimpressed with her life goals, but honestly, I didn’t see much from him to suggest his goals were any grander.
Meanwhile two of her best friends, Dee (Kaya Coleman, DANGEROUS GAME: The Legacy Murders) and Madison (Scarlett Sperduto, Blue’s Room), are at opposite ends of the spectrum. Madison is fully supportive of her friend’s dream while Dee is focusing on law school and decides to show her support by … NOT subscribing or watching any of Kali’s videos?
Anyway, they’re all going to a cabin for their annual float trip, with the ashes of Chuy in tow. Chuy, it is believed, OD’d on the river and drowned and it’s up to these guys to take his ashes with them. Not sure where Chuy’s parents or family come into this, but then this is Locke’s only produced script, so maybe Chuy, being dead, never received a backstory more complicated than “he OD’d on the river.”
Also along for the trip is ex-couple and co-parents Zola (Christina Nguyen, LION) and Blake (Grant Morningstar, THOSE WHO WALK AWAY), along with their daughter Thea. Now, the way everyone was talking in the RV on the way there, how they can’t believe Zola and Blake have a kid, I was expecting a newborn, but this girl’s 5 or 6 and if they’re still reeling at this fact this many years later, they’ve got some issues, these people.
So they spend the first night in the cabin drinking and unwinding. A knock comes at the cabin, and I could only hope and pray it’s Dave Bautista wanting to tie them up and force them to sacrifice one of their number to avoid some terrible disaster. Instead, it’s a man simply known as “Creepy” in the credits (played by Executive Producer and Assistant Director Matt Wise), who tries to warn them against going onto the river.
They tell him get lost and when they turn around, he’s gone.
The next day, they load up their gear and head to the river. Dee isn’t thrilled Thea is coming along, but hey guess what, they’re parents, and sometimes parents bring their kids to things.
SPOILERS
Okay, I’m STILL talking about #FLOAT, so I’m gonna condense a little bit here. I’m also gonna spoil the hell out of it, so if you plan to watch this and don’t want to know what happens, skip most of the rest of this review.
Thea is lost on the river, Blake is killed when he and Zola go in search of her. Zola comes back freaking out. Dee says she’s being a drama queen, no way he’s dead. She goes off in search of Blake, finds him dead, and gets kidnapped by Creepy.
Meanwhile, the rest of them get back on the river? Kali is recording for her vlog when, in the background, Zola is yanked underwater, out of her tube, and is gone.
Freaked out, Madison says F all this, she’s done, so they leave her on the side of the road with her float, and Kali and Jackson get back on the water.
Back in the woods, Creepy removes the gag he somehow put on Dee and tells her “I’ve got the girl”, then leads her to some kind of underground storage shed deep in the woods, where he tells her Thea is inside, she’s safe. Dee goes inside and Creepy locks her in.
Then we go to Madison who sees a truck coming, but is freaked out when she sees Creepy is driving, she backs up, trips over her float, splits her head open on a rock.
Back at Kali and Jackson, they finally reach the end of the river, get back to the RV where Jackson realizes he had the keys on the center console of their float and when they hit the rapids, the keys must have fallen out. He’ll go back up the river to try to find them.
Um … ok … good luck, I guess?
Kali wants to go with him, but he somehow convinces her she’s safer in the dark parking lot, alone, on a float trip where they’ve lost literally every other member of their group.
Yeah, totally safe. Good going, dummy.
Jackson finds Madison floating along—no keys, though, so there goes that idea—but when they try to get to shore, some force pulls them back into the water because, as Creepy tells Kali in a scene coming up, they are “of the river” now.
Yes, Creepy catches up to Kali. He tells her, “I have your friend. And the girl. They’re safe.” He takes her to them where Kali thanks him for trying to look out for them, only to have Dee come out and literally bash his skull in with a rock. Then she has her arm torn off by some monster that was beyond the movie’s budget, so we only see it in silhouette behind a plastic tarp. If you ever need a REALLY good laugh, watch Dee’s death scene. To make it better, watch it with the Benny Hill music playing over it.
Kali grabs Creepy’s keys off his belt and she and Thea run as fast as they can back to Creepy’s truck where Thea finds an iPhone charger in the glove compartment. Kali is FINALLY able to plug in her now-dead phone and upload her video from that day. She is IMMEDIATELY inundated with likes and comments and views and she’s suddenly realized her lifelong goal of being internet famous as she prepares to hit record again and #FLOAT ends and holy effing hell.
END SPOILERS
On the one hand, you are so very welcome for just saving you 75 minutes because now you NEVER have to hit play if you ever come across #FLOAT. On the other hand, I could have spent that time watching something good or just reading comics.
Let me just start with I hated everyone in this movie. I hated the characters, I wasn’t even fond of the actors playing them. But I can’t put ALL the blame on them; Locke gave them a really bad script, and if THIS is what he was directing them to do, I wouldn’t trust him with THAT job again, either.
The quality of the thing kept going back and forth, too. At times, #FLOAT had the look of a real life movie, complete with a budget and professionals doing their job. At other times, it looked like the kind of stuff you and your friends would film when someone’s parents bought a video camera for the family for $100 at some discount electronics store in 1990.
If you’re going to make your main character, Kali, this vapid and self-obsessed nothing, could you at least give us ONE character who isn’t equally terrible? No? They’re all gonna suck as people? Awesome. Cool. Thanks, movie.
Now, having said all that, Locke and company have still made a better movie than any I’ve made (I haven’t made any movies), so I can at least applaud their dedication and hard work. I just think if THIS is the thing you’re going out into the world with, workshop the script a bit, write around your budget, and for God’s sake cut that scene with Dee telling Thea about pinky promises and rivers of blood flowing out through your fingertips and into your parents’ hearts. What the actual hell were they thinking?
My main concern—and biggest fear—is that, somewhere out there, Locke is thinking of all the loose plot threads he left dangling and is right now planning a sequel to #FLOAT. For God’s sake, let it go. Chalk this up to the learning experience I hope it was, and move on, preferably to something that doesn’t involve making another movie.
Hard pass on this one, but if you don’t believe me and need to see for yourself, #FLOAT is streaming for free on Tubi.
More Horror Corner
Are you looking for a better movie to watch? Check out one of these instead.
Misery ~ Planet of the Apes ~ The Dead Zone ~ Pet Sematary
C. Dennis Moore is the author of over 60 published short stories and novellas in the speculative fiction genre. Most recent appearances are in the Dark Highlands 2, What Fears Become, Dead Bait 3 and Dark Highways anthologies. His novels are Revelations, and the Angel Hill stories, The Man in the Window, The Third Floor, and The Flip.
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