Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Flowers In The Attic: The Origin’ On Lifetime, A Prequel To V.C. Andrews’ Novels That Sets Up The Creepy Story Of The Foxworth Family

Flowers In The Attic: The Origin is a prequel to V.C. Andrews’ infamous novel about the creepy goings on in Foxworth Hall, a book that pretty much every teen and preteen girl in the 1980s read via flashlight under their covers. If you never read it, let’s just say that it involves a lot of, um, inappropriate relationships and lots of sexual assault. Yep, a real page-turner.

FLOWERS IN THE ATTIC: THE ORIGIN: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: A dark shot of Foxworth Hall. A voice says, “I, Olivia Winfield Foxworth, claim this to be my last will and testament.”

The Gist: We meet Olivia Winfield (Jemima Rooper) in the late 1910s in New London, CT; she’s a partner with her father (Harry Hamlin) in their business, certainly an unusual occurrence at the time. Mr. Winfield introduces Olivia to the most eligible bachelors in the country, Malcom Foxworth (Max Irons), heir to the massive fortune of the Virginia-based Foxworth family. Despite her reservations, and her desire to find out more about his family after he told her that his father travels and his mother died when he was 5, she agrees to marry him.

After the joyous wedding, the nightmare begins almost as soon as she moves into Foxworth Hall. Malcolm is cold and strict; he doesn’t sleep with her on their wedding night and demands that she run the household from a dusty office behind a false bookshelf. Mrs. Steiner (Kate Mulgrew), who is in charge of the staff, looks at her with little respect and lots of suspicion; Olivia turns to her personal maid, Nella (T’Shan Williams) for companionship and advice.

When she discovers the attic, the un-dusty portrait of Malcom’s mother, then her pristinely-kept bedroom, things accelerate. The only sex the couple has is when Malcolm forcefully and repeatedly rapes her in his mother’s room. She gets pregnant twice, but disappoints him when he has two boys, not a girl to carry on his mother’s name Corrine. When his globetrotting father Garland (Kelsey Grammer) arrives, with his young, pregnant bride Alicia (Alana Boden) in tow, things unravel even more. But a surprise pregnancy leads Olivia to start her revenge plan against Malcolm.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? The first episode of Flowers In The Attic: The Origin feels less like its source novel — or even the 1987 movie, or the 2014 Lifetime TV movie) and more like a cross between The Gilded Age and The Haunting Of Hill House.

Our Take: Flowers In The Attic: The Origin consists of four feature-length episodes which will be aired by Lifetime throughout July. The episodes track Olivia’s journey from forthright feminist to a woman who seeks revenge on her husband, children and even grandchildren, amongst a whirlwind of incest and other wildly inappropriate relationships in her family.

The first episode does a decent job of setting her transformation in motion, especially after she actually moves into Foxworth Hall. What it doesn’t really get into too much is how Olivia, a smart, business-minded person who is adamant about women gaining equality with men, found herself wooed by Malcolm. Their relationship is pretty much sped through, and we can only imagine that he’s an expert in laying on the charm; that’s the only explanation we can think of.

We don’t know it for sure, because Irons’ performance as Malcolm is so wooden, with his Virginia drawl going in and out at will, that it’s hard to imagine that he had any charm to spare. Rooper’s performance improves the deeper Olivia gets into Malcolm’s twisted world, but Irons’ manner stays mostly the same; he constantly sounds like someone who has to concentrate while uttering his dialogue instead of reacting to the actors around him. It’s especially glaring in his scenes opposite Grammer, who has his usual genial style (though there are some brief moments where he has an accent, too).

There aren’t many scenes that are particularly scary in this first movie, but we’re expecting that factor to increase as the story gets even more insane. Will fans of the novel want to sit through almost six hours of Olivia’s story? It’s hard to say, but knowledge of how the story continues may build interest in how things got to the point where they were at the start of the novel. It all really hinges on how Rooper handles Olivia’s unravelling. After the first episode, it seems like her acting is gaining strength as Olivia gets more unhinged, which is a good sign.

Sex and Skin: Besides the weird, weird scenes where Malcolm forces himself on Olivia, there’s nothing,.

Parting Shot: “The best kind of revenge takes time,” says Olivia in voice over as we see her making herself look fake pregnant.

Sleeper Star: Paul Wesley plays Olivia’s cousin Amos, who seems to hold a very inappropriate candle for her that might come into play in later episodes.

Most Pilot-y Line: When Olivia starts laying out what she knows about Malcolm and the terms that will keep her quiet, he says “Don’t be ridiculous.” She replies, “Oh, we passed ridiculous long ago.” That’s supposed to be a moment when the tables have turned, but it sounds sillier than was intended, we think.

Our Call: STREAM IT. There is lots about Flowers In The Attic: The Origin that feels over the top, cheesy and silly. But, then again, given that it’s airing on Lifetime, those factors aren’t exactly surprising. But the performance by Rooper and the mostly well-executed setup of her story should keep fans of the novel (and some who never read it) watching.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.