The Killing Tree, aka Demonic Christmas Tree, is a Holiday horror film following a serial killer who now embodies a sentient Christmas tree hellbent on murdering anyone who doesn’t respect the true meaning of Christmas.
The Killing Tree is directed by Rhys Frake-Waterfield and written by Craig McLearie and tells a story of Christmastime possession when a distraught widow tries to perform a spell to bring back her murdered serial killer husband, but things don’t go exactly as planned, sending his soul inside a Christmas tree – complete with light strands and those scratchy, bendy fake tree branches.
Holiday Horror
The Killing Tree should be a ridiculous fun time, but not everything comes together in this holiday massacre. The central concept of serial killer with his soul sent into an inanimate object is prevalent in horror–most commonly in Child’s Play. And this idea has also been done with the Christmas season in Jack Frost.
Unlike Jack Frost, The Killing Tree is not over-the-top, silly, and amusing enough to do this concept justice. What makes a film like Jack Frost so fun is its nonstop one-liners and creative death scenes directly involving the unique elements of the killer snowman in question.
The Killing Tree features a few choice kill scenes that bring up the fun factor, but too often, the deaths are far-off CGI–and often the same types of death scenes are reused multiple times in a row. In The Killing Tree multiple people die in the exact same way–and these moments often involve the tree growing huge and unleashing tentacle-like sharp arms to stab its victims.
But the charm of The Killing Tree resides in the moments where the titular tree is shown as close as possible to a regular Christmas tree. When the tree shuffles along–clearly a man inside a tree costume–with its tiny tree branch arms running along the wall, the film feels fresh and fun. We want to see more practical moments where the tree finds ways to cause havoc in its normal fake tree body.
The Killing Tree features a few choice moments where light strands and ornaments are used during suspenseful moments, allowing the glow of these objects to cast colorful light upon our victims and survivor. Throughout the film, there were a few moments that looked genuinely great and utilized the tree well, but so often the kill scenes relied on these stabby tentacle arms rather than the unique capabilities of a normal store-bought faux Christmas tree imagined as a serial killer.
Pacing and Flashbacks
The Killing Tree starts with an exposition-heavy scene showing us pictures of all the victims of the real serial killer Clayton (Marcus Massey) before he becomes a tree. The film could have started off better if we saw a flashback–and this could have helped the pacing later on when we frequently have flashbacks to that night the previous Christmas.
Every time the film flashed to the previous year, the momentum gets a little lost and the structure of present vs past never quite jells together into a cohesive narrative, making you want to spend time in both of those timelines.
When the film steps away from the tree, we are left wanting more ridiculous tree murders. For a movie with a short runtime, too long is spent away from the central killer Christmas tree–and only part of the time we spend in the presence of this holiday beast is memorable.
Mundane Tree Moments
Surprisingly, some of the best moments of the film don’t come from the horror the tree commits, but the mundane, normal things Clayton tries to do now that he is in his tree body.
Watching a Christmas tree with revenge on his mind get stumped by trying to read a map to find his way to his victims adds a level of welcome charm to the whole experience.
We also get to see the tree play the piano and drive a car. These moments are the right amount of comical for a movie like this–and I kept wanting more scenes like this, or to have this energy crossover into the kill scenes.
The True Meaning of Christmas
The opening scene of The Killing Tree suggests the film will feature Clayton and his wife going after specific people for not following Christmas traditions correctly–and there could have been something great done with that. Christmas Evil (1980) did a wonderful job of showing a killer going after people for not respecting the season and being stingy and greedy when it comes to giving to those less fortunate.
But The Killing Tree only briefly talks about families not respecting Christmas without specifically showing which traditions they broke, making the motive feel weak. In The Killing Tree, Clayton–now living as a Christmas tree–is going after Faith (Sarah Alexandra Marks), the sole survivor of his previous killing spree.
We never really know what any of these families did accept for giving gifts to each other. In Christmas Evil, there is a focus on consumerism and capitalism connected with Christmas, but the error is more obvious. The Killing Tree could have worked better if we had more specificity to how these families showed their greed.
Conclusion:
The Killing Tree had the potential to be an over-the-top Holiday horror classic, but the practical effects moments are overshadowed by bad CGI and a lack of creative kills utilizing the unique elements of a faux Christmas tree come to life.
Have you seen The Killing Tree? What did you think? Let us know in the comments below!
The Killing Tree released on VOD November 1st.
What are your favorite holiday horror movies and are you excited to see a movie about a murderous Christmas tree? Share your thoughts with us in the comments.
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