The Oscar-winning movie that pets cannot stop watching

NEW YORK – One night shortly before the Oscars ceremony in early March, my boyfriend decided to catch up on Flow, the animated film from Latvia that would go on to win best animated feature.

When I returned home from dinner, I found that the movie had also captured the attention of another viewer – my dog Daisy, a corgi mix.

Search on TikTok and you will find a number of videos of dogs and cats alike viewing Flow alongside their owners, appearing to recognise themselves in the gentle saga, which tells the tale of an adorable black kitty who must work with a motley crew of other industrious animals to survive rising sea levels in a surreal landscape.

The trend is a particularly cute coda to what was already one of the feel-good stories of awards season in which the dialogue-free indie – made on open-source software and directed by Gints Zilbalodis – triumphed over studio fare such as Inside Out 2 and The Wild Robot to earn Latvia its first Oscar.

Watching Flow in the theatre is a wonderfully immersive experience, where the spectacle of the movie’s visuals are on full display. On a big screen, you can lose yourself in the animation, noticing the way the water ripples, succumbing to the beauty and terror of the universe this little kitty is trying to navigate.

Watching Flow at home – it is streaming on platforms like Prime Video, Apple TV+ and Max – with an animal is an equally delightful experience, but a different one.

You may find your attention pulled in two directions as you try to contemplate what this all means to your pet as well as what it means to you.

I, for example, tried to decipher just what was going on with Daisy. Surely, she was not understanding the climate change allegory. But her huge ears stood up straight as she gazed upon the heroic cat, and I caught her running up to the TV for a sequence in which it and its capybara ally go tumbling off their boat.

Seeing – or perhaps just hearing – the characters in peril stressed her out on some level.

Matiss Kaza, who produced and co-wrote Flow, said in an e-mail that he suspects that it is the real animal sounds used in production that attract the attention of the pets. “We don’t commonly think of pets as a potential target audience when making films, but we are glad that Flow has proved to be a special bonding experience between viewers and their dogs and cats.”

When I spoke to social media users who posted clips of their household beasts responding to Flow, they explained that their animals are not usually this entranced by the screen.

Mr Chayse Orion, 24, had seen other TikTok posts about the film before he decided to watch it. He thought it was cute, but was not paying super close attention. His cat Fishbone was.

“Fishbone was so engrossed in the movie,” Mr Orion said. “He was just so into it, which was really weird because I’ve never seen him interact with a show like that. He’s never really been interested in the TV at all.”

Mr Orion knew it would make great internet content. Not only did he start to film Fishbone, he moved the cat’s tower closer to the TV for a better view, one that put Fishbone at eye level with his animated brethren. “I actually put it on again yesterday for him to watch while I was working,” he said. “It’s definitely his favourite movie now, for sure.”

Mr Daniel Gao, 32, posted a clip of his cat Karma, who looks strikingly similar to the feline designed by Zilbalodis. His caption? “Lol, why she so locked in tho.”

Mr Gao, however, admitted that Karma at times walked away when the action was getting intense.

“I think she was like, ‘Whoa, I think this is too scary for me, I have to look away,’” he said. “I felt the same way too.”

Dogs, like Daisy, are also getting in on the action.

Ms Celine Orosco, 29, found that Samson, her golden retriever, was also invested in Flow. She said it was the first movie he watched all the way through. He was particularly excited, she noticed, whenever the labrador that joins the cat’s group of travellers came onscreen. “He really loved that dog,” she added.

Of course, people do not know what any of their animals are actually thinking when they watch Flow.

My boyfriend at first inferred that Daisy liked the lemur who has a basket full of trinkets, then thought perhaps she was upset by it. I know that she did not follow the plot. She did, however, hear the so-called voices of the characters, and reacted to whatever they were conveying, intrigued in her own way.

Still, people love to watch their pets watching Flow for the same reason they love to watch Flow.

The film understands that delicately anthropomorphising these animals is a powerful tool. Their movements are carefully calibrated to replicate the way the creatures would behave in real life, but their actions are just human enough to make the story feel relatable.

Would a cat, a dog, a capybara, a large bird and a lemur all team up to save one another should massive floods happen? It is hard to say. But it is a good metaphor about how empathy can be salvation.

Similarly, people believe they recognise their furry companions’ personalities, knowing full well that they are most often just projecting their own sensibilities onto the pets.

They want to believe the pets think like they do, even though they know they likely do not. But when they watch Flow like their pawrents do, they grow a little bit closer. NYTIMES