Curse of the Witching Tree

Unhappy family moves into an old house while the father lies comatose in hospital. But the house is cursed by the spirit of a wronged mother.

OK, it's low budget but ... sigh. Doesn't anyone in Britain watch indie-American or French horror? Does everything have to be heritage ghostery, or Up Yours! soap opera?

The story does get its spooks on at about 40 mins, with an effective inter-cut of brother/sister/father, and the dialogue thins out as the director finally uses the camera. I won't mention what went before. Couple of badly timed jump scares - the first is literal, the second imitates a scene in Jessabelle.

It's hard on actors when they're presented with a mess, so I can't judge how good they are - except Eva the blind visionary was convincing: she had timing, and the visual of candle flames for eyes was a good touch. Actors are there to act, not overact.

Sad to be harsh, but the writing, direction and editing caused a sharp intake of breath. Use of music was just cheese - see the prologue for evidence. Pfff.

Keep it simple: ditch half the dialogue, a third of the characters, and a quarter of the runtime. Then carve out a clear story through sound and editing.

Really, there is not one original frame in this flick. Not one. You've seen everything here before and you can see what's going to happen from 10 miles away.

At the risk of giving out spoilers, I won't go into the details. Let's just say that this is a poor man's Amityville Horror or The Shining or...any countless other haunted house films made in the past 100 years or so.

The good news is I won't remember how unoriginal and uninteresting this film was 10 minutes from now. How come I didn't give the movie a 1? The cinematography wasn't too shabby; did kind of look like digital film, though which, truth be told, just does not for a film-look make. Digital video has its place in music videos and commercials, but in movies, a less-clean, slightly-muted look is preferable.

All involved tried their best with the lousy, unoriginal script they had. Could've been worse, but also could've been better.

Oh dear. I have contemplated creating an IMDb profile to be able to post reviews in the past, but this was the movie that finally compelled me to get off my a**e and put pen to paper. Not because CotWT is so irredeemably awful (although it is), but because a number of the early reviews to be posted here were so thoroughly misleading. I can only re-iterate what others have already suggested: the positive reviews can ONLY have been posted by people with a vested interest in promoting this pile of garbage. But, to an extent, they did their job - I was suckered into watching the movie, and I daresay I wasn't the only one. Hey-ho.

I'm not going to bother saying too much about the movie itself, there's no real point. The script is direction-less and largely incomprehensible. The acting is laughable - there is a reason you have never heard of any of these actors before, and you certainly won't be hearing of them in the future. The plot consists of taking just about every scary movie cliché and putting them together in a series of badly-acted, largely unrelated scenes. And the editing is absolutely laughable, probably the worst aspect of the whole sorry enterprise. I was sat watching this with my wife and daughter and, after fifteen minutes or so of us all sitting in embarrassed silence at the horror unfolding before our eyes, I turned to them and said "This is without doubt the worst movie I have ever watched". I wasn't even joking. However, this was a turning point of sorts, since from that moment onwards we were all able to relax and enjoy the movie for its unique awfulness, rather than trying to discern any sort of artistic merit in it. It actually made for quite an entertaining ninety minutes or so, as we sat there laughing as one pointless cliché followed another in this procession of over-acted, poorly scripted dross.

If I were to recommend this film on any level, it would be just that: if you are looking for a challenger for your own Worst Movie Ever Watched list, this could well be the one you have been waiting for.

Bleuch.

This is by far the worst film I have seen in many a year. The acting is more wooden than the tree in the title, the casting is shocking (The son has a posh Southern accent and the daughter a northern accent, plus the Mother must of been about 4 when she had the daughter)and even the sound is something you expect from a home movie you'd see on You've Been Framed. The camera-work is very poor too and over uses different angles and cuts away without need too may times.

Somebody should of been honest with the director at it's first screening and told him not to release this as it will bound to haunt him (more than this film haunted me anyway) in years to come if he really wants a career in film making.

Let my one good deed for 2015 be to warn everybody not to watch this.

I actually created this profile to post this review, YES... It is that bad!

I don't know who has written the other reviews here but I'm guessing they're connected to this heap of dross in some way. Only a mentally deficient person could possibly extract a single positive from this utter nonsense. The acting isn't even Am Dram standard, to compare it so would be unfair on the many wholehearted folks who participate in Am Dram. Wooden, spiritless and talentless. The story is beyond preposterous, the characters ludicrous, especially the moody teenage girl and 'tearaway' young lad. What I can't understand is how the directors and producers when watching rushes of this film didn't throw their hands up and admit they have made an utter howler and just bin the lot. That would have been the kind thing to do for the world at large.