Holiday Horror: Treevenge

Treevenge from jasoneisener on Vimeo.

I stumbled onto the short film Treevenge and I thought it would be awful. It kind of is, but in the most awesome way possible. The theme from Cannibal Holocausts start the film, which is a nice reference. It features sentient trees that can talk to each other, but not to humans. At first, they are living in a beautiful forest with not a care in the world until savage humans come in and rip them from their habitat. One even tramples a sapling. In the truck, the trees are lamenting their fate, bashing against the walls, and crying.

The process of preparing them for sale and weeding out the ones not fit for selling split them apart is sad and tears them away from their saplings. The trees speak in hilarious little squeaky voices with subtitles letting us know what they say. Everything the humans do looks brutal, over the top, and cruel even though the actions are fairly mundane. The tree lot is so loud with hundreds upon hundreds of trees frantically speaking, giving it an entirely different vibe than we experience in reality. The people who work are the worst ever, treating the trees terribly and cursing at them and each other.

The Treevenge comes when the trees have had enough and attack people on Christmas. The film follows a few different groups of people and their weird, dysfuctional relationships and Christmas traditions. The catalyst is a live new coverage of lighting up a giant Christmas tree with over the top lights and fireworks. It's the last straw for these poor tortured creatures and the resulting carnage is impressive. Some trees go for the direct kill while others go for pets first. One tree kills an amorous couple by threading branches through their faces and forcing them to kiss. They even kill a child for revenge of their own young. The ending is amazing with blood straining the pristine snow while people are still fighting against their Christmas trees in the streets.

I laughed so much during this film. I loved the blood, gore, humor, interesting kills, and low budget charm. I will definitely watch this every Christmas season. It's only 16 minutes long, so give it a watch. If you like over the top, irreverent, comedic horror, this is definitely for you. It reminds of the scene in Metalocalypse when the Dethklok members muse about how metal Christmas trees really are.

My rating: 4.5/5