Treevenge

What to say about this short film? Sometimes you see something and immediately feel like you know exactly what it is, what it aspires to be, and how you'll feel about it and this was that for me. I didn't even see a trailer, I just heard of the movie in passing, looked it up and read the tag line and felt as sure I knew what I was in for as I did when I first read a description of what poutine was on a menu and decided to order it. No surprises, no regrets.

This is as low budget as low budget gets and the short runtime really helps... there's not much more investment here and so there's no need to sit through obligatory character development and story exposition when neither of those things really matter... this is high concept stuff that begins and ends with a darkly funny, entertaining premise. And then delivers exactly that, with just the right amount of campiness. There's some satisfying gore at the end and a little bit of over the top shock-horror in the way that a bit of sugar helps the medicine go down. It's grotesque and absurd, but in service of the grotesquely absurd premise itself. And so it all comes full circle in the end and the ends here definitely justify the means. My first thought upon completing my viewing of this was the people I immediately wanted to share this with, to share some dark chuckles and revel in the irreverence of it all.

Could this be an addition to my regular holiday rotation? Maybe! It's short enough that it doesn't require much justification and the payoff is just a lot of fun counter-cultural and subversive joy in seeing another perverse, but tightly conveyed, distortion of the typical holiday tropes.

If you haven't seen this short, do yourself a favor and go watch it online. I just went on Joblo.com and I noticed they had posted this short and being that it's from the people that brought us Hobo with a Shotgun, I had to check it out. It's about 16 minutes long and it works in two ways being a parody of slasher movies from the 70s and 80s and actually being a gory comedy/horror film, it totally accomplishes both. I really don't want to give away too much because there are a few moments that will shock the hell out of you and make you laugh at the same time. Basically it's about Christmas trees that take their revenge on humans on Christmas day. The set up works extremely well for the gory payoff in the third act. Being a fan of The Canadian show Trailer Park Boys I was extremely happy to see Sarah Dunsworth and Johnathan Torrens(aka J-roc) in this. This is a really entertaining short, it's very funny and I loved the Fulci-esquire gore. My favorite line "It's Christmas and I wanna f*ck!". I really hope to see more from these filmmakers, excellent work.

This is a very silly film, but if you're in the mood it delivers in spades! It really builds up to the anticipated "treerevenge" of Christmas trees fighting back, and when that moment finally comes the film-makers go all-out delivering some shocking but hilarious kills! Everything goes completely OTT, which I think is how you have to approach making a film like this. The last kill has you thinking "are they really going to go there...?" And yes, they do - in explosive fashion. Some of the gore effects are kind of hokey, but everyone involved seems to be aware of this and so they play around with that for laughs.

This would definitely make a fantastic break from the usual Christmas films, so why not pop it on on Christmas Day and offend the whole family!

Sit back, relax, and enjoy Treevenge for all its bloody goodness. It's a "they fight back" saga that one hasn't really seen before, unless perhaps one is so well versed in Troma knowledge that they could dig up an example and look like the smarty-pants of the room. But for the moment, I can't think of another example of photosynthetic comeuppance aside from this, where trees cut in the forest are cut down for Christmas, and fight back against their 'owners'. It's got subtitled tree dialog. It's got dumb-s*** humans in the sticks and trailer parks and homes. It's got so much blood you'd think that the blood coordinator from Dead-Alive stopped by to pitch in on the fun. And it's so much fun, on both an intellectual level and on that visceral bloody-fun level that only the best in Troma can bring out (or just creative comedy horror in general) can bring out. It also reveals that Jason Eisner, the director and also the force behind the little-seen Grindhouse trailer (only shown in Canada with the Rodriguez/Tarantino film but also infamous online), has a real potential career ahead of him. What Treevenge exactly spells of it I can't say with the best crystal ball. But there will be something, with blood perhaps.

...what happened to the Entwives. :-) If you've never heard of the Ents from "Lord of the Rings", you won't catch the reference but if you have, that should say it all. ;-)

Seriously though, this was a very cute short. It's not exactly "family friendly" though - 2 f-bombs that I caught, though that and the gore is the worst of it. It's the kind of movie you wouldn't expect anyone to take seriously enough to put as much effort and work into as these people did. I mean sure, it's not "Casablanca" or even "Killer Clowns from Space", but everything was pretty neat & tidy & put together quite well. I think they should do a sequel - perhaps something where they show the trees in the forest with humans decorated for a tree holiday by a human- fed fire - I mean, there are so many directions one could take a stint like this. Seriously dudes, make a sequel! I think I see "cult favorite" in your future! ;-)