Curse of the Witching Tree

This was my second failure to bring home a good scary movie for family movie night. So much cliché, from disrespectful children, to potato sacks

Acting was terrible, story was tired, and did I mention that the acting was terrible? Was no research done to try and bolster the attempts to make any of this more believable, was he in a coma, or taking a nap?

The scariest part of this movie, was the fact that at the advertised 90 minute mark it didn't end! It went on for another 3 minutes. Very disappointed, after reading some lengthy reviews that really promoted this as a significant indie shocker. At least I had enough time to do some dishes and laundry.

Don't get me wrong, i'm British and i like nothing more than watching a home-grown movie. But this... I don't know where to start, the acting is like watching a school play, over exaggerated movements which are comical, the dialogue is stilted and amateur. Some members of the cast are supposed to be school children and plainly look about 25, it's insulting and unbelievable. Technically it's.... well i don't know, it's..... not technical at all. The dialogue is all captured using ambient microphones, you can barely hear the dialogue in places due to traffic, bird song or the wind. The whole thing is shot in what appears to be a lovely country house but whomever actually owns it (probably one of the producers, director or 'mate of') has obviously blown all their money purchasing or renting the property because inside the refurbishment is as poor as the acting. Who the hell would spend 3 million on a house and then put a 'Beko' fridge in it? The floor coverings, doors, door frames and skirting boards are straight out of a 90's new build house and not fitting at all with the period of the house. All in all i'd say the first 1,000 people who rated this movie are friends and family of the people who worked on it, certainly not the people who worked on it themselves because i doubt that would amount to more than 35 including the cast. What Budget? What script? What lighting? what score? What sound engineer?

It's like something produced by First year Bradford film School students, and that's an insult to Bradford Film School students as to date, they've not produced anything this appalling to my knowledge

The video quality will be a good indictator - you'll be able to tell that this is not a big budget movie. And maybe something you do not want to watch anyway. That will be up to you. Predictable and a few other flaws - quite a few to be honest. This still might be something for the hardcore horror fan out there.

Not easy to watch and/or follow this tries to make the best of a story that easy to follow if you were to put it nicely. Some shock effects work, there is a bit of nudity and the ending is not half as bad as I expected it to be. Still you can use your time better and do something more productive with it - I'm certain about that.

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.