Cherry Tree

What if you moved The Wicker Man to Ireland?

Cherry Tree

The film is a blatant rip off of both The Wicker Man and another recent British film called Wake Wood, its a tale of selling souls to a larger more sinister force. A bit of witchcraft a bit of devil worship and it's all tied together in a neat little bow.

The story is simplistic and a nice view of Irish life, it's a little predictable and a little uncaring but on the whole it's good stuff.

Cherry Tree seems to get a lot of flack, but it's really not that bad, it's a quirky way to end a day, a different way. It's nothing you've not Sen before, but it's also very much something we've not seen in a while.

Good effort Ireland.

This is a pretty good movie with believable acting and a suspenseful storyline. The creators did a good job making it atmospheric and creepy, especially for people with a phobia of centipedes.

But the downside is there there is a serious lack of character development and elements that make no sense, for example the centipedes everywhere. Yes they certainly add to the creepiness factor but what's their purpose? And why centipedes and not some other creature? Anyway, there are plenty of unanswered and underdeveloped elements in this movie.

Overall, this is an interesting and entertaining movie, and it's flaws are easy to overlook.

CHERRY TREE is an Irish horror yarn that comes to us courtesy of the team behind Hammer's WAKE WOOD. I didn't like WAKE WOOD much, finding it an uninspired copy of PET SEMATARY, and CHERRY TREE in turn is a somewhat weak retread of ROSEMARY'S BABY except done on a low budget and lacking that classic film's atmosphere of deceit and dread.

Saying that, this isn't a bad film at all. It's quite well made and I appreciate what the filmmakers were trying to do here. A young cast give performances that are pretty good for a genre flick, with lead actress Naomi Battrick very effective as a protagonist who must find reserves of inner strength in order to fight some very literal demons.

As a horror film, CHERRY TREE goes for the gross-out approach throughout, with some very gory moments included particularly towards the climax. KILL LIST is another film that this one appears to be indebted to. The director also has an obsession with centipedes, although they're included as random CGI nasties here rather than being truly disgusting as in an '80s Hong Kong horror flick like CENTIPEDE HORROR. Anna Walton (who played the elfin princess in HELLBOY II: THE GOLDEN ARMY) is highly effective in a crucial role.

Hellboy 2's Anna Walton plays teacher Sissy. I wish my teachers looked like her. Naomi Battrick is one of her pupils, Faith, who has a troubled personal life. Her school life isn't a bed of roses either, as she is bullied by her bored, empty-headed classmates. She's also a virgin, which marks her out for special attention in this fast-moving horror tale.

Director David Keating piles events on top of each other, giving us no chance to become distracted. The moments of horror are competently staged, and the acting is convincing throughout. With so much going on and so quickly, I sometimes got the impression while watching that the film doesn't quite know what it wants to be. The finale takes on a rather different tone, in which we get the impression we're not supposed to be taking things too seriously, which further compounds the uneven quality. Nonetheless, an enjoyable, energetic chiller. My score is 7 out of 10.

I see other reviews calling this a rip off of other film ideas, but is that not simply a genre? Is every vampire film a rip off of Nosferatu? Every werewolf film a rip off of The Wolf man? You get the idea. It's an OK film, seen far worse.

The one thing that got me is why every cast member had an English accent when it was clearly filmed in Ireland?