Director :Michael Bartlett
Starring :J. Michael Trautmann Dana Melanie Daniel Fredrick Clint James. USA. 1h 38m
The film had so much potential and offered a lot of misleading ideas with previews cover art and publicity that’s ok because I understand that a film does need to be pushed in it’s early stages and it doesn’t mean that it’s a terrible film but it’s just not the supernatural thriller that I was expecting.
All that aside let’s have a look at what Treehouse has to offer, the film opens with a teen girl returning home to find her family missing, she grabs her daddys shotgun and goes to investigate the scene ends with the screams of her little brother coming from the forest with a shadowy figure looming over her. cutting to the strife of two brothers at a local school the younger being bullied and the older looking after him after getting into a fight they return home to a TV broadcast about a missing girl and other local children, a new curfew has come into place but ignoring the advice they go out into the forest to find the missing kids and end up facing the worst nightmares after they found the missing girl disheveled and frightened in a Treehouse.
It’s certainly more of a romantic drama and an attempted mystery than an actual horror movie. I’m not saying that there is a lack of gory scenes and bloody fights but the potential for it to be on point with any half decent (supernatural) horror, there are a few gifted scenes but literally there are just lit a few grisly scenes in the entire movie, but most of it boils down to a drama between the two main protagonists, youngest bullied boy and the missing girl we spend most of their time together trying to get to safety..
A lot of backstory comes out during the course of the movie and the two teen team become closer and closer realising that their survival depends on numbers and with more than bravery. But so many supernatural possibilities missed, this Cabin in the Woods style story is supposed to be confined to a tree house setting even though this is unique it gives the impression of a haunted forest or something that if Sam Raimi had got his hands on then we’d have a very different story here. The fantastical gore and mysterious spirits are soon abandoned for something else with less tension or drama and and sadly a lot less imagination.
The film is weighted so wrong, it actually doesn’t include it’s own ending, there’s way too much time at the beginning introducing details and it’s stalls constantly throughout trying to pad out time, then for some strange reason the big finale is lined up but the film ends. It’s as if the director was holding the audience to ransom to insist on a part 2 to actually get closure on the film which is highly annoying and disappointing kind of ruin the entire film.
Totally uninspired man…
Rating 3/10
R – The Hallow (2015), The Hollow (2015)
L – Forest Horrors,
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