Treevenge (2008)

Yawn. Poorly Filmed Snooze Fest.

Excellent adaptation.

Funny, strange, confrontational and subversive, this is one of the most interesting experiences you'll have at the cinema this year.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

"Treevenge" is a 16-minute movie from 7 years ago written and directed by Jason Eisener. His most famous work so far is probably "Hobo with a Shotgun" starring Rutger Hauer. This one here is among his earlier works and as you may have guessed from the title, it is a (Christmas) tree revenge movie. It is basically what you would expect as such, nothing more nothing less. The bad thing is that this one runs for 14 minutes only without credits and it takes 10.5 minutes of introduction until the trees finally take revenge. Not acceptable in my opinion. 4 minutes introduction, 4 minutes gore would have been perfectly appropriate. The way it is here, you are already half asleep when this film finally gains real steam. When it does, it's good, but with all the boredom of the first minutes, I cannot recommend it to anybody except serious horror movie fans. thumbs down.

TREEVENGE is a short horror spoof by Jason Eisener set at Christmas time where conifer trees decide they're enjoying Christmas as much as turkeys do and decide to strike back at the human race and one can't help thinking if Eisener has been influenced by The Christmas Invasion episode of DOCTOR WHO which also involved a Christmas tree taking on a life of its own ? Certainly there's much to indicate the influence of THE EVIL DEAD films where eyeballs pop out and other over the top blood splattered deaths take place but this seems slightly at odds with a scene set in a van transporting the trees which makes clear allusions to Jews being sent on trains to Nazi death camps There's a constant feel of high camp running throughout this short which is probably to its detriment , especially where the human characters are concerned . Of course the whole premise of trees having a revolt is pure nonsense but one can't help thinking the director doesn't want to upset the audience too much seeing as both a baby and a family cat are cruelly butchered by the trees and therefore takes away any accusation of bad taste by turning up the camp factor , but I would have preferred a slightly more menacing tone to TREEVENGE

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.

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.