★★
“Tree’s company”
About to get married, Kira (Riddervold) and Marco (Campos) head out for a last quiet weekend together, at a luxurious cabin in the woods. Unfortunately, they become the target for the local rednecks and their kidnapping plot. This goes wrong, leaving Marco shot dead and Kira raped, then shot dead. Both bodies are buried in the woods, but – what are the odds? – it’s at the base of a tree where a native American woman was similarly slain by American soldiers in the mid-19th century. The spirit of that victim resurrects Kira out of her grave, in order for her to take her vengeance on those responsible.
The problems from here start early, beginning with the inability to spell the word “battalion” in the opening titles. Yes, it’s a small thing, but a low budget is no excuse for such sloppiness. Things continue wobbly, with both leads clearly having English as a second acting language; Campos, in particular, is often borderline unintelligible, and I wondered if this was perhaps filmed deep in the forest territory of the lesser-known Belgian Apaches. Things perk up a bit once the kidnap kicks in. There’s a suggestion Kira might be military trained, as her hand-to-hand skills are clearly non-standard issue. This is rapidly discarded, and never mentioned again; you wonder why they bothered, especially since the main thread is supernatural power.
There are some other issues too. Too much time is spent on the bad guys, who are little more than shallow and uninteresting stereotypes – save the one who admits to a fondness for Elton John because “his music soothes me.” I did like that. Partly as a result of this padding, as well as an excess of Kira/Marco shenanigans early on, the entirety of her revenge ends up shoe-horned into the last 30 minutes, when it should certainly be the focus of the majority of the movie. On the plus side, the film goes old-school for its (fairly copious) gore, using practical effects instead of the bad CGI we see too often these days in low-budget films.
Riddervold is somewhat better when not burdened with the lumpy dialogue the film inflicts on her. I mean, who comes up with lines such as, “Fuck it in a bucket”? Probably the same person who thought it was a good idea to simulate FaceTime with video superimposed on a very obvious still photo of a hand holding a phone. Those kind of blatant and entirely unnecessary mis-steps are all too common. Sadly, they tend to rob the film of the intermittently entertaining energy it possesses, at least when concentrating on the revenge which should have been the main topic.
Dir: Marcello Daciano
Star: Henriette Riddervold, Lane Townsend, Burt Culver, Charles Campos