Lemon Tree Passage

The American Maya (Jessica Tovey), Amelia (Pippa Black) and her brother Toby (Tim Pocock) are spending vacation in Australia. The meet the locals Geordie (Tim Phillipps) and Oscar (Andrew Ryan) on the beach and Oscar tells a ghost story at the campfire. He tells that a ghost of a motorcyclist appears at the Lemon Tree Passage intersection when a car with teenagers speeds up at the spot. They decide to go to the location to see the ghost with tragic consequences.

"Lemon Tree Passage" is a horror movie with a story that is a senseless mess. It is impossible to understand the plot that begins with the ghost of a married motorcyclist and ends with the fiend of a raped girl that was murdered. Is Sam the older brother of Geordie? Why the evil ghost seeks revenge against the teenagers and not only against Sam? Why Maya is connected and possessed by the evil spirit? There are so many questions to be made that better off not waste time watching this flick. My vote is two.

Title (Brazil): "A Lenda Negra" ("The Black Legend")

Lemon Tree Passage looks like a movie made from three different rejected screenplays. It's utterly inconsistent, shifting its tone multiple times and using cliché base premise that doesn't pan out in any way. It even has stupid teenagers cast who mock how ridiculous campfire story is, and then the movie proceeds on doing that exact same ridiculous cliché.

This is the same old story about a group of teenager who try an urban legend. The characters are identical to almost every other horror movies, the main lead brunette who has visions all the time, the possible love interest cool guy, the blondie and the comic relief. They behave in a very predictable way, this might just be a copy of bloopers from 80s horror movie.

After a while the logic crumbles as both the characters and even the haunting act in such arbitrary manner. Splitting up in crisis is foolish, but these people split up off-screen without any reasons. The supposed entity even haunts sporadically, it jumps from scene to scene as urban legend, possession and whatever horror gimmick the mood takes it.

The movie is a consecutive series of random occurrences which lose any sense of continuity or even structure after thirty minutes, which is already thirty minutes of your life that could've been saved.

Okay so I'm forced to write a real review as there are only 1 or 2 which are from someone close to the movie crew. So this movies might be OK if you'r a teen male under 16 and you saw less than 100 movies in your life. If you aren't then don't bother. it's a pure waste of time. Why ? well all the cliché and stereotype are here. The funny thing is one guy starts telling a story " on a dark and stormy night" and they reply : "what a bunch of clichés"..Oh irony :) It takes too long to develop. Just the 2 first minutes perspire bad student movie. It's a copy of a copy of a copy of a bad movie.. no imagination just the kind of movie you do in school to learn how to direct and place cameras. But This movie is not made to be shown anyway it's one of those project that are paid by subvention so the crew is paid doing it and then no matter it does 10 or 1 million entries they wont get more money anyway. It's just excuse to get public money and have a salary doing something. In France that kind of system exist as well the result is 83% of produced movies have less then 10 000 viewers. concerning the scenario well , one can write the synopsis in 3 minutes. that's the kind of story you already saw thousands of times , nothing new here. a big AVOID tag !

Austrlian horror films have a good track record (at least in my book). The best ones like 'Wolf Creek' however don't rely on the supernatural. The Austrlian people and their country are very dangerous and can make for great characters, especially in horror. 'Lemon Tree Passage' relies far too heavily on the supernatural, more than any film should. It starts off as a story about an urban legend based on a long strip of road and by the end is something else entirely (what I'm not exactly sure). The writing is so poor throughout that it's almost impossible to get a grip on exactly what is happening and why.

There aren't a lot of frights at any stage of the movie. The opening scene is bizarre and poorly directed and things don't get any better from there. From a very early point it becomes hard to care about the fate of any of the characters. The only one with any personality isn't in it for long and the rest really have nothing going for them. There's no time spent creating any tension is any scene and the suspension of disbelief is far too great to ever buy into (or care) about the story that's trying to be told here. A real misfire.

I will begin this by saying I am a horror/thriller lover. Anything from Evil Dead to Shutter Island to Saw. Love them!!! I watched this honestly because A) I try and watch all that i can get my hands on and; b) because my family live in lemon tree passage and I thought I may be able to freak them out with a tale. The story was..... mundane. You really didn't care who died or lived through it and the twist at the end is not what you would call a twist. The story was sorely told and there was no real information or moments to give you the gasp factor. Neither was there enough blood to go the B grade blood bath movie that needs no real plot to go on. This movie wasn't terrible. It wasn't good either. The actors were average and kind of cute. Honestly they didn't even show the best of the area they were in (which is gorgeous) It is a very easy watch with nothing that could catch up even the drunkest of watchers. It is average.