Continuing the current trend of influencers being fair game for the chopping board (sex-starved teens and abusive parents are yesterday’s news) #float tries to conjure up nostalgia for the gory days of the 1980s with a supernatural twist, and some vlogging for good measure. What is a solid concept at heart falters with poor execution and lack of coherence.
Young Vlogger Kali (Kate Mayhew) and a band of beautiful young studs, embark on their annual river palooza, to commemorate Chuy (Cristobal Reyes) who drowned on a previous trip, we cut between movie camera and phone footage a little too often just to reiterate we are in the modern media age. After a cliched local tries to warn them of danger, they promptly ignore him, only to face a supernatural force and their own fears.
The set-up is quite well handled from first time director Zac Locke (who previously worked as a producer on horror films such as 2009’s Black Christmas), as tubing in Laos was a popular past time for drunken tourists before being banned, due to alcohol and deep water not mixing well, so the spirits of the tragic are ripe for horror treatment. Once we get down to the nitty-gritty, however, too many ideas make for a muddled third act, with characters we don’t care about simply disappearing under dark water, it’s all a little underwhelming and shows a limitation in budget and imagination.
Revelling in the stupidity of influencers has also been done better in films like Bodies Bodies Bodies, which had a clever reveal and something to say about the profession. #Float seems to use it just to look contemporary, and with a vague antagonist and many questions left unanswered due to the film barely making 80 minutes, it becomes just as vacuous as the protagonists it might be critiquing.
#float is available on digital in the US now.
