Quick Reviews: Hounded and Demonic Christmas Tree.

jeromereviews1994

Oct 31

After being hired to rob a stately home, a group of friends is caught by the homeowners and hunted across the estate. To survive the homeowners' sick brand of entertainment, the group must band together and fight for survival.

Hounded (or The Hunt) is if you took The Hunt (2020) and somehow made an even worse version of it, the movie suffers from almost the exact same problems. From very poor development of why idea of the movie is actually happening, to the very weak writing that really doesn't explore the surroundings of the main characters or even the characters themselves. There's actually some surprisingly decent kills here that for what the movie had to work with is actually quite impressive, the setting is actually beautiful and actually fits the movie pretty well. The issue is the movie doesn't do a whole lot with it, at least The Hunt used it's setting in some effective ways (although there were very few moments) here it just doesn't happen unfortunately. There's great ideas here they just aren't fully realized.

Hounded is available on all VOD platforms.

3/10 D-

On Christmas Eve, a scorn widow casts an ancient spell to resurrect her executed husband. However, when the spell goes wrong, the husband is brought back as an evil Christmas tree. Hell-bent on getting revenge on the one who caused his execution, the body count keeps rising as the tree hunts her down. Can anyone stop this killer Christmas tree before he gets to his target?

One type of small genre of films that I have a soft spot for are killer inanimate objects, or people and things that wouldn't normally kill people but they for some reason do in the movie (Zombie Cats From Mara, Thankskilling, Santa's Slay) these types of movies tend to be a lot of fun and go on to be some bad they are hilarious movies. But like every genre not every single one of these movies is successful and that's the case with The Killing Tree or The Demonic Christmas Tree. Like with some movies in this genre it doesn't fully take advantage of the absurd nature of the idea of a killer Christmas tree, instead it mostly goes over the characters and their past which really doesn't help since the characters are about as interesting as cardboard cutouts. The biggest problem with this movie is it's just not funny, outside of maybe one or two jokes the movie again doesn't take advantage of the premise. The kills are about what you expect but are yet the best part of the movie, it's a shame because this idea could work but instead it's just largely forgettable and executed in the most dull way possible.

The Killing Tree or Demonic Christmas Tree releases tomorrow on all VOD platforms.

1/10 F

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