Grégory Morin’s gross-out horror film starts with a man getting his foot stuck down a toilet and somehow only gets worse from there. Arriving at a seedy inner city nightclub in search of his ex, middle-aged cokehead Luc (Jonathan Lambert) nips into the gents’ for a quick line. When he gets his foot stuck in the khazi (an argument against European squatty potties, if ever there was one), a terrible chain of events begins to unfold. Just when you think his situation couldn’t get any worse, it does. Every single time.

A particularly grim entry in the people-stuck-in-stupid-places-or-things subgenre, Flush manages to make a 70-minute film about a man with his head stuck down a toilet (we told you it would get worse) somehow not feel as though it’s padded out or stalling for time. Turns out, a shitty nightclub toilet is an eventful place to spend the best part of an hour, between aggressive coke dealers, drug-hungry rats and Chekhov’s glory hole.

Morin and screenwriter David Neiss approach Luc’s plight with a relatively straight face, trusting in the absurdity of the situation. The pair do impressive work in continually raising the stakes, creating a sense of progression even when it seems like there’s quite literally nowhere else to go. That said, there’s a surprising sense of restraint for a film about a man with his head stuck down a toilet, and those fearing the second coming of Salò might have an easier time than expected.

Playing either a disembodied head or a headless body most of the time, Lambert puts in an incredible performance, while the film’s supporting cast (which includes a very talented rat) do a good job of making an already stressful situation even worse for the poor guy at every opportunity.

You’ll never look at a nightclub toilet or European squatty potty in quite the same way again. Maybe forego the cinema snacks for this one.

FLUSH premiered at UK FrightFest on August 22, 2025.