Treevenge

The festive film begins with a bunch of chlorophyll-thirsty manic lumberjacks, slashing and cutting their way into a neighbourhood of firs. Small children, parents and grandparents are violently torn from their roots. We see and listen all of this from the tree's perspective, we are watching from their eyes (?) and listening from their ears (??). Another proof that plants have feelings. You could say that "Treevenge" is based on true events. Every year just before Christmas, a genocide happens in every Christian country of the world. Millions of firs are been viciously mutilated on the altar of profit.

This year things will be different though. On Christmas Eve a miracle will happen, the vengeful spirit of Christmas will possess the homes of Christian families, and in particular their Christmas trees. On Christmas day, when children gather under the balls (the Christmas balls) to open their presents, the trees will also give them a present, a slow, painful and above all funny death. The firs will get their hardwood revenge on literally everyone in the most festive way! What the trees have been through at the beginning of the film, the humans will at the end of it. Buckets of blood, dark humour, practical effects and a soundtrack straight from the 80's, including the opening theme from Cannibal Holocaust! Blast from the past.

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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.

Throughout history every December people head into the northern pine forests to hack down trees; nobody giving a thought for the terrified flora. This year as more are harvested to decorate people's homes they plot their revenge. This year men, women, children and pets face a grisly end at the boughs of the trees!

This low budget horror short that packs more laughs and gore into sixteen minutes than many feature length films. The way the trees talk, complete with subtitles, is hilarious and once they strike the gore level is high as fake blood splatters the screen. No time is wasted on unnecessary character development and once the horror starts it continues till the final credits roll. I would definitely recommend this to all horror fans; watching it could become a new festive tradition! Recommend it to your friends, they will thank you as I will thank 'Luke the Barman' who recommended it to me!

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.

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.