Flow- A Blind Film Critic Reviews A Silent Animated Film With No Accessibility
Quick Take: Yes, I was provided a screener for the Golden Globe winner for Animated Feature. no, despite being nominated for two Academy Awards, and the most obvious film to require audio description of the year, it has no known audio description. this is a cash and awards grab. This is already on VOD. It flew through theatres, like it has some rapid half-life to make the most money it can, before people go back to celebrating The Wild Robot. Yes, I listened to this movie. I couldn’t figure it out. Lots of sound effects, no dialog. it sounded like an animal was drowning, which is a distressing thing to listen to out of context. And, from what I can tell, it probably was.
this is a movie void of anything that would help a blind or low vision audience get from point A to point B, and I don’t like things that treat me and people like me like we are less than. Like this film isn’t for us, it is for other people, and fuck us for our audacity to be disabled. Often I review films without audio description, and I can grasp onto something, even if my final grade is still unwatchable due to audio description. if I were a nicer person, that grade would be a bit more of a sliding scale. But, I’m routinely denied accessibility, so my grace has worn thin.
But with this? It is literally unwatchable without audio description to the maximum amount you could possibly take that to mean. Unless you just want to listen to score/sound effects for 90 minutes, you should spare yourself the indignity. And, if Netflix can be bothered to late stage commission audio description, Flow can too. They just aren’t interested. And, in a world where corporations are running like hell from the words “Diversity, equity, and inclusion”, I don’t see this changing in our favor. So, flow, can go drown in the collective cesspool of inaccessible films deemed not appropriate for blind people that are released every year, without ever giving us a second thought. For more, check out my video.
