Wellness Gets Weird

Read Time:8 Minute, 41 Second

MOVIE REVIEWS
Floored
–

Genre: Comedy, Short
Year Released: 2026
Runtime: 10m
Directors: Emily Alpren, Marchelle Bradanini
Writer: Emily Alpren
Cast: Trilby Glover, Sheila Carrasco, Mara Wilson, Jocelyn DeBoer, Ben Geurens, Renée Threatte, Abby Wathen
Where to Watch: shown at the 2026 HollyShorts Film Festival and Indy Shorts International Film Festival

RAVING REVIEW: There’s something immediately funny about gathering several privileged Los Angeles women around wine, cheese and a pelvic floor guru, then slowly discovering that nobody in the room is nearly as relaxed as the decor suggests. FLOORED takes that contradiction and runs with it for ten increasingly strange minutes, using wellness culture as a doorway into anger buried beneath motherhood, marriage, aging, and the expectation that everyone should still look perfectly composed while dealing with it all.

Eleanor Williams (Trilby Glover) has reached the point where her old identity and her current life no longer fit comfortably together. She was once a successful actress, but motherhood and getting older have changed how the world sees her, while her husband, Steven (Ben Geurens), keeps moving through his own career without the same erosion of relevance. That imbalance doesn't need an extended explanation because Glover makes Eleanor's frustration visible before the short turns it into something much stranger.

Her answer is Marla (Sheila Carrasco), a Westside pelvic floor guru who arrives with the language, confidence, and carefully packaged spirituality associated with a particular corner of modern wellness culture. Eleanor also brings together other women facing their own versions of dissatisfaction, including Jane (Mara Wilson) and Daisy (Jocelyn DeBoer). What begins as a vaguely ridiculous afternoon of healing gradually strips away the pleasant behavior everyone has learned to perform.

Co-directors Emily Alpren and Marchelle Bradanini understand that FLOORED needs to look almost too nice. The women wear bright, carefully separated colors, their surroundings are immaculate, and the whole thing has a heightened retro polish that makes the dissatisfaction underneath feel even more uncomfortable. There’s something deliberately artificial about the surface, as though everyone has spent years constructing a version of adulthood that photographs beautifully while offering very little relief.

The styling isn't accidental. Alpren and Bradanini drew from films including BEYOND THE VALLEY OF THE DOLLS and WOMEN ON THE VERGE OF A NERVOUS BREAKDOWN, and that influence makes sense once the group is assembled. Bold colors and exaggerated femininity aren't being used simply to make a ten-minute short visually memorable. They become part of the joke, surrounding women who are coming apart internally with an environment determined to remain cheerful.

Glover is the right person to hold that contradiction in the middle. Eleanor isn't introduced as completely miserable, nor does she spend the entire short openly furious. Much of her frustration comes from realizing that she's increasingly being defined by what has happened to her rather than what she once did. Motherhood isn't portrayed as something she regrets, but the loss of identity around it is treated with far less sentimentality.

That distinction is important because FLOORED isn't interested in making motherhood itself the villain. Alpren and Bradanini instead target the assumption that becoming a mother should somehow make the disappearance of everything else feel natural. Ambition, sexuality, creativity and individual identity don't automatically evaporate once someone has children, yet society has a remarkable ability to behave as though women should gracefully accept exactly that.

The filmmakers have firsthand experience with those contradictions. They met while attending a baby-and-me class with their three-month-old children and eventually formed a creative partnership from the friendship that followed. That background gives the satire a specificity that keeps it from feeling like outsiders laughing at affluent women dabbling in questionable wellness practices. They clearly know these environments well enough to mock them while also understanding why someone might desperately reach for whatever promises connection.

Carrasco has fun playing directly into that side of the story. Marla possesses exactly the confidence required of someone expected to guide a room full of people through problems much larger than anything a pelvic floor session could reasonably address. The character could've been nothing but a parody of expensive Westside healing, but Carrasco leaves just enough sincerity underneath the performance to make the joke more complicated.

Mara Wilson's presence adds another layer that's hard to miss. FLOORED is partly concerned with aging and perceived relevance in an entertainment industry that has never been especially generous toward women as they get older, so casting someone still strongly associated with childhood performances is clever. Wilson doesn't need much screen time for that history to quietly inform the joke, and her dry delivery fits naturally among the increasingly frustrated group.

Jocelyn DeBoer brings another useful comedic presence, particularly because the women can't all express dissatisfaction in the same way. The ensemble works best when individual reactions start colliding instead of simply becoming one unified complaint about men or motherhood. Their eventual solidarity feels funnier because they don't initially seem like people who would necessarily choose one another outside this room.

That leads into the aspect of FLOORED I like most. For all the satire around gurus, privilege, and self-care, the eventual point isn't that these women need to discover the correct wellness product. They need one another. The short treats genuine connection as something messier and less marketable than whatever service Marla could package, requiring people to admit things they'd rather hide instead of purchasing another solution.

The comedy becomes darker as those admissions accumulate. Alpren and Bradanini describe the film as moving from pain through vengeance and eventually toward enlightenment, and that progression gets increasingly literal. FLOORED isn't content to finish with everyone hugging, thanking their guru and heading home slightly more self-aware. The suppressed anger needs somewhere to go, and where it goes is the punchline that gives the short its sharpest edge.

I'm less convinced that the ending completely earns how abruptly it escalates. There’s pleasure in the audacity of the turn, but ten minutes isn't much time to move from recognizable frustration into something much more extreme. The surprise works as black comedy, yet I wanted another few minutes with these women before the film made that leap.

That may be the biggest limitation throughout FLOORED. There are enough ideas here for something substantially longer, and the filmmakers themselves have acknowledged how much material they're trying to compress. Aging, motherhood, postpartum isolation, Hollywood relevance, marriage, sexuality, wellness grifters, friendship, and suppressed rage are all competing for attention inside a runtime shorter than most television episodes' opening acts.

Production circumstances apparently didn't help. The filmmakers worked with a small budget and large ensemble, lost an actress during filming after a medical incident, and ultimately had to complete what was intended as a three-day shoot in roughly a day and a quarter. It's impressive that the finished short looks as controlled as it does, given how much coverage they reportedly lost, especially since the visual presentation is one of its strongest qualities.

Rayana Rasamee's cinematography and the production's clothing choices create an immediate identity. At the same time, Mandy Brown's editing keeps a crowded ensemble moving without turning the gathering into ten minutes of disconnected reaction shots. The film occasionally feels like it needs additional breathing room, but it rarely feels visually unfinished.

Music adds another interesting layer to that presentation. Amy Ileen Wood handles the score, with music featuring Fiona Apple appearing at exactly the moment when FLOORED's carefully controlled female frustration benefits from someone culturally associated with turning that frustration into art. It's a smart match for a film that wants anger to feel liberating rather than merely unpleasant.

The short has already appeared at both Indy Shorts and HollyShorts, which feels appropriate for something designed to make an immediate impression in a packed festival program. Its bold palette, recognizable cast, and increasingly outrageous premise give it enough personality to stand apart quickly, even if the limited runtime leaves parts of the emotional argument underdeveloped.

A 3/5 ultimately feels appropriate because I like the ideas and presentation more than I think the short fully delivers. Glover anchors the satire well, Carrasco and Wilson add distinct comic personalities, and Alpren and Bradanini clearly understand the world they're criticizing. There's also a refreshing willingness to let women over 40 be angry, ridiculous, selfish, funny, and complicated without insisting that every frustration be transformed into an inspirational message.

FLOORED just ends when it feels like it has finally uncovered its most interesting version of itself. Ten minutes is enough time to introduce this colorful little coven and send their healing session somewhere wonderfully inappropriate, but not quite enough to explore everything bubbling underneath it. The result is funny, visually distinctive, and considerably darker than the cheese board initially suggests, even if I'd gladly have spent another twenty minutes watching these women figure out what to do with all that rage.

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[photo courtesy of 4MMMS, WESTMORE DRIVE]

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