If you ever have a Christmas horror movie night, I insist that you make room for this great 16-minute short about what happens when Christmas trees attack. It’s sure to please those very special sickos in your life in this time of goodwill.
The idea is that it’s the holidays as told from the point of view of those poor trees that we uproot from their cozy spot in the woods every year, harshly pack into trucks and then throw into camps where they’re sold to smiling families who can’t wait to squeeze them into tree stand torture devices and barbarously trim their branches. “Ouch, ouch, OUCH!”, scream the trees in unheard agony.
Life is hell for a tree until one Christmas they all snap and kill EVERYBODY. Blood flies, drips, oozes and splatters as director Jason Eisener (future maker of the great Hobo With a Shotgun) tries to come up with every way possible, and impossible, for a tree that walks like a man to kill people with its bare branches. Half the budget or more surely went to the over-the-top practical gore effects (with nods to Lucio Fulci and Ruggero Deodato). It’s hilarious, it’s a crowd-pleaser, it might make you barf up those twenty-seven gingerbread cookies that you shouldn’t have eaten before and after dinner. Only a real Grinch could hate it. Or, on the other hand, maybe only a real Grinch would LIKE it.
Fun fact: The opening credits music is Riz Ortolani’s gentle main titles theme from Cannibal Holocaust.