Cherry Tree (2015)

[runningscared]

Movie: Cherry Tree (2015), directed by David Keating

Watched on: Shudder

Ran: 7.35 miles, 9’06”/mile, 01:06:58 (recovery run)

 

Okay, so I know I’m guilty of repeatedly referring to an “average horror fan” when clearly no such creature exists. I mean, the term can be a useful shorthand when trying to gauge or describe whether someone will like something or not, but it’s a lazy oversimplification. It makes a lot of borderline-offensive assumptions about the in-fandom alleged universal appeal of, say, double-digit body counts and gallons of gore on gratuitously nude bodies. I really should do better.

 

On a completely unrelated note, I hereby attest that the average horror fan will probably deplore Cherry Tree. I, however, thought it was not without its charms.

 

Cherry Tree is set in Orchard, a small village in… Ireland? England? I mean, the movie is Irish and shot in Ireland, but almost all of the characters sound English, so I’m not clear on that. Whatever. We see a girls’ field hockey coach being sacrificed underground by a coven of sack-headed witches, the leader of whom—Sissy—then shows up at the local school as, of course, the new coach, seeing as the old one died suddenly and mysteriously.

 

Faith is a younger member of the team, bullied by the older girls for, among things, being a virgin—truly a crime at the ripe old age of 15. Sissy’s ears perk up at this; as we all know, witches always need virgins, right? Indeed, as we have been informed via a student presentation on local history in Faith’s Exposition 101 class, there’s an ancient cherry tree in Orchard that once granted magical powers to a coven of witches when they fed its roots with the blood of human sacrifices. But they got greedy and tried to cheat the devil: their plan was to find a virgin (see?), ingratiate themselves with Satan by letting him impregnate her à la Rosemary’s Baby, and then double-cross him and kill the baby to feed its blood to the cherry tree, thus leveling them all up to Superwitch status. The plan went awry, the coven was destroyed, and in these enlightened times no one believes a word of it.

 

So when Sissy finds out Faith’s father is dying of leukemia, she takes Faith to the chamber beneath the eponymous cherry tree in a refreshing bit of candid hey-look-I’m-a-witch!-ery. Sissy kills and resurrects a chicken using blood-soaked cherries and some truly epic centipedes to demonstrate her power, and offers Faith a deal: bear the coven a child (sound familiar?), and they’ll cure her father’s cancer.

 

After an understandable freakout, Faith decides to save her father’s life and reluctantly takes the deal. She seduces Brian, her best friend’s crush, at her 16th birthday party, takes him home, and does the deed. Little does she know that the coven has used blood-cherries and flesh-burrowing centipedes to put Satan in Brian’s body. (They have also replaced her usual gourmet coffee with Folger’s crystals.) And in the morning, the coven kills and revives Faith’s dad much like they did the chicken, and Sissy pronounces him cured.

 

Faith is starting to question her life choices, however, as she gets morning sickness and tests pregnant later that very day—which makes her suspect that just maybe there’s something less-than-innocent about this whole “have a baby for us” deal. Unfortunately, every time she tries to enlist outside help, people wind up dead. And now it’s a race against time, because devil-babies gestate in a little over six weeks—how will Faith keep the blood of Satan’s spawn from feeding the cherry tree and also keep her father alive?

 

If it all sounds a little preposterous, you’re not wrong, but if you’re not completely averse to indie horror, foreign films, or the notion of a just-turned-sixteen-year-old virgin getting down with Satan-by-proxy, I have to say, Cherry Tree has a lot going for it. For one thing, it’s nice to see the age-old spawn-of-Satan plot given a little twist with the coven’s intended double-cross. For another, the performances are solid, with Naomi Battrick taking on the heaviest lifting as Faith and delivering the goods. The film also just looks good, which is always nice. Say what you will about Cherry Tree, but you have to admit this film has style.

 

Is it scary? Depends on your personal hangups, I would say. There are a few good jump scares, but beyond that, the film relies heavily on the inherent and interrelated horrors of sex, pregnancy, childbirth, and infanticide. Also, there are often ten-inch-long centipedes crawling all over every visible surface (when they’re not burrowing inside people’s bodies, that is). There’s also the oppressive threat of conspiracy, because it seems like pretty much everyone is in on this plot, and the kills are graphic and gruesome without being splattery.

 

The problem is that the scary bits are less effective than they could be, because Cherry Tree is erratic—in tone, pace, characterization, and just about anything else you can name. Sometimes this lack of equilibrium works to reinforce the feeling of the rational world crumbling beneath Faith’s feet, but just as often it pulled me out of the narrative moment. Also, the throughline of the plot doesn’t match up with the the throughlines of the characters. This gets especially problematic near the end; without spoiling too much, I’ll juts say that the thrust of the story starts to waver when the stakes are suddenly eradicated and you therefore begin to care less just when things get confusing. The final quarter-hour or so moves at breakneck speed, and I admit I started getting pretty lost on a first viewing. 

 

I did enjoy Cherry Tree, though, lovable mess that it is. None of its many flaws strikes me as fatal, though I guarantee the mythical average horror fan will disagree. Oh, and you will probably hate the ending, too. I happened to dig it, which is why you and I aren’t going to be friends.