Rated: Not Rated | Running Time: 86 Minutes
From: Dark Sky Films
On Blu-ray and DVD April 5, 2016
Faith’s dad is dying of cancer. Boo-hoo, what to do? I know, be the surrogate mother to a demon created by centipedes! Such are the basics of the horror flick “Cherry Tree.”
Okay, the movie is slightly more complicated, but really, it doesn’t matter.
I’ll expand things a bit for review purposes.
Faith (Naomi Battrick) is sort of the picked on girl at school. As the movie begins we learn the folklore of witches and a cherry tree, as told by young skippy, Brian (Patrick Gibson). Faith’s world is rocked both by being picked on, and also by the fact her dad has cancer.
Enter creepy, field hockey coach, Sissy (Anna Walton).
Befriending Faith, Sissy sees the target of what she desires – a surrogate to carry the demon baby her coven of witches needs to bring back evil. While Faith is distraught learning her father is going to die, somehow she follows Sissy down some stairs into a creepy basement, watches Sissy kill a chicken, and then bring said chicken back to life with some centipedes. It’s like, “Hey, Faith, I can heal your dad, all you have to do is have sex with Brian, get pregnant, and give me the baby.” “Sure, I’m in!”
We all know this won’t work out as well as planned, and of course, it doesn’t. I mean, how do you actually trust a creepy, field hockey coach/witch, who wants you to mother the demon seed?
I guess the problem I had with “Cherry Tree” is that the core of the story was there, the entire “witches, sacrifice, tree” thing, but it got lost in goofiness, and cheesy, “shock” scenes that just didn’t fit, but kind of came off as “I know, let’s put Faith and her father in a car and set it on fire,” and “Wait, she has to fight her school nemesis. Ok, have them hit each other with big pipes.” Also, her demon spawn was the world’s biggest baby. I mean, it was half the size of her body, and her vagina probably would have exploded giving birth to it. And also, also, maybe I should have been paying more attention, but who was the dude in the car chasing Faith?
Too many unnecessary “scenery” scenes, too much hokiness, too much of a story all over the place, and too many centipedes. That for me leads to not too many stars, and I give Cherry Tree 1 1/2 star out of 5. It just never clicked for me.
The Blu-ray does have a nice “Making of..” extra, so if you liked the movie, or just wanted to try to figure out more of what might have been going on, be sure to check that out.
That’s it for this one! L8R!!