Another Baghead In The Woods - The Trilogy: Terror at Black Tree Forest (2010), Escape to Black Tree Forest (2012) and Black Tree Forest III (2012)

Welp, here we are. Across the wide open plains of a cheapjack franchise involving another bag-masked loonie killing people in the woods, channeling their inner-Jason Voorhees. How original...

Terror At Black Tree Forest (2010)

Rating: 1/2

Starring: Allison Scott II, Paul Albers, Steve Carty

So for the first six minutes of this mostly hour long-trek, we see a 1970s married couple and their boy Brian Mellows out in the woods, with mom and pop deciding to leave lil' Brian alone to play while they go hanky-panky in the forest. This private baby-making session is unfortunately interrupted by a random killer in a sack mask who proceeds to stab dear hubby dead and go rapey on dear wifey. Brian hears the commotion and arrives there just in time to see his mother get snuffed out by the masked man, leading to a chase scene that kinda goes forever with both the kid and the killer tripping on stuff. The boy eventually outruns his assailant and was soon found tuckered out near the road by a passing driver.

Cut to the present and we now follow four friends out to camp at the very same woods Brian Mellows had his haunting experience and, wouldn't you know it, Mr. Mellows, now fully grown yet mentally broken from the trauma, has just escaped from an asylum and made his way to the very same backwoods with a murderous streak. Take a wild guess where all of this is heading to...

There's really not a lot go by this one; the story can be easily shortened down to "kids go to the wood, kids go dead" and nothing much else, all shot and edited in that psuedo-grainy "grindhouse" aesthetic then popularized by the Tarantino/Rodriguez double-feature throwback Grindhouse (2007), only with more eye-straining colored tinting that I'm sure would fry some people's eyes blind if they look at it too long, as well as brain-numbingly dull rock acoustics and synthesizer music to bore our ears, too. All the characters were written unremarkably generic and, worse even, acted with the flair of a wooden stump, so, really, this is honestly one of the most forgettable slasher titles out there, which makes the fact this thing got a movie series even more shocking.

I honestly see very little appeal in this one. Sure, you could call this title an attempt to capture the good old days of hacking and slashing, but it just doesn't feel like it tried too much. Everything about it look, sounds and feel half-assed and it shows. If y'all are looking for a throwback slasher, you can do better than this limp piece of work...

Bodycount:

1 male knifed through the head

1 female had her throat cut with a knife

1 female knifed in the gut

1 female knifed to death

1 female knifed in the eye, killed

1 male had his throat sliced with a knife

1 male found murdered, method unknown

Total: 8

~~~

Escape to Black Tree Forest (2012)

Rating: 1/2

Starring: Paul Albers, Brandon Aylor, Karrie Bauman

Taking place two weeks after the events of the first film, now dubbed in the news as the "Black Tree Terror Massacre", lone survivor Mare Strode is still reeling from the fact that she narrowly escaped being butchered by the mad masked slasher Brian Mellows and her recent stay at the hospital to recover did little to help. So much so that, the moment she got home, Mary picked up a pillow case and turned it into a mask before going Halloween (1978) opening sequence on her own mother, knifing her to death. 

Yep, it looks like we're going down the route of Friday The 13th Part V: A New Beginning (1985), only this one's a lot more open with the fact that our then-final girl is now a mad slasher, returning to Black Tree Forest to start another killing spree. And everything from there is basically a repeat of the first film as we have yet another set of four teens visiting the titular woods to camp out, all the while doing some dumb shenanigans like stopping by a grocery to buy some supplies and pig out on free samples, as well as skinny dip on a pond albeit some footages missing. (Yep, they're still doing the Grindhouse (2007) shtick here) These tomfooleries are mostly intertwined with Mare's dad and a detective out driving to the same site in hopes of finding the girl, unaware that she'd gone cuckoo for murder and is about to go Michael Myers on our main gaggle around (and I kid you not) the last fifteen minutes of the damn movie.

Frankly, the whole thing simply failed to bring anything with actual substance as despite the plot implying a lot of interesting directions, like Mare's sudden turn to the stabby side, her father's desperate search for her or the suggestions that the first film's original killer may still be out there seeing no actual body was found, none of that really mattered as these are all set aside for what basically amounted to nothing but a lot of padding and even more padding. There's no real urgency to the pace here and by the time we do get some actual slasher horror, the fucking shit is rushed like hell with cheap kills, one uninspired chase sequence and an ending that I'm certain would have been more impacting given we actually gave a shit.

Much like the first film, this sequel is damn forgettable. Heck, even more so as practically nothing happened here to earn any genuine form of thrills, scares or intrigue. It doesn't help too that the writing is as bland as the talent acting them out, as well as the sound design and editing are basically shit. It's simply a boring follow-up to an already boring film and I would rather eat a laundry pod than subject myself to another helping of this movie. Throw it out on a pile of dog doo and carry on with your day...

Bodycount: 

1 male knifed in the eye

1 female knifed to death

1 male knifed in the back

1 male implied brained, bloody rock seen (flashback)

1 female knifed

1 male impaled on a tree branch

1 female knifed to death

1 female killed offscreen with a knife

1 female shot with a shotgun

1 male shot through the head with a shotgun

Total: 9 

~~~

Black Tree Forest III (2012)

Rating: 1/2

Starring: Brandon Aylor, Jennii Caroline, Breana Mitchell

Wow. Like, actual wow. You couldn't even see shit most of the time in this one!

So apart from being a backwoods slasher, this third entry to a franchise that doesn't even need to exist is also a holiday bodycounter, taking place around Halloween. Here we follow Chuck, a character from the prior film who survived the massacre that took the lives of his friends and girlfriend. He's now locked up in a nuthouse where we see a doctor interviewing him about the events that led to them camping at the titular Black Tree Forest, which meant half the running time of the entire run focusing on random shots of him and his girlfriend having fun at an amusement park before eventually showing us the clip note version of the second movie. (Think Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2 (1987), only less funny, less 'Garbage Day!' and grainer)

Chuck also now believes he's part of a cycle of violence which may or may not be an actual curse inflected by the Black Tree Forest and it is this belief that motivates him to escape the nuthouse, don a raincoat and dollar store mask, as well as steal a knife from an old lady's house ala Halloween II (1981) before legging it back to the woods. All the while, yet another set of four characters planning a Halloween night bonfire at Black Tree Forest and, well, you know what comes after...

...That is, of course, if you could see goddamn anything! Seriously, there's little to no lighting done in this mess so most of the time I'm trying to figure out what half of the crap I'm looking at whenever a scene takes place either at night or in the dark. And because of this, I couldn't even make out most of the killings and for those that I did see, they're nothing to clamor about, making Black Tree Forest III's talky direction, muddled audio, padded pacing, and overly grainy and irritatingly saturated shot-on-video visual aesthetics not really worth sitting through.

I mean, I can give it some respect for perfectly capturing the feel of an 80s local channel midnight Halloween viewing, this film definitely replicated the look. (complete with a shlocky TV host and an intermission courtesy of a black-and-white Trick 'r Treat safety PSA!) I can also appreciate it for trying some type of twist in the form of a random red herring involving a woman being tortured inside someone's basement which eventually ties up to this movie's ending but, aside from these, Black Tree Forest III is just a big bore of a movie and a headache to watch. What really else is there to say about this movie but 'fuck off' !

Bodycount:

1 male murdered, seen strangled with a cord

1 male found dead with a missing eye

1 female had her throat cut with a knife

1 male stabbed with a knife

1 male stabbed with a knife

1 male hit on the temple with a nailed wooden board

1 female brained with a hammer, body later seen dumped off a bridge

1 female killed, method unknown

Total: 8

~~~

And that's all of them. All three of the original Black Tree Forest movies and, my god, I think I need a strong drink to cleanse away these horrifically atrocious exploitation throwbacks I just subjected my eyeballs to. I'd be even more fortunate if I pass out drunk and get a hangover in the following morning because that would have been a far more engaging experience compared to this movie, too! But oh, what's that? Why did I phrase these three films as the original? Well, dear reader, you curious scamp, you! The franchise found a way to be remade in United Kingdom back in 2021! In fact, I reviewed that movie first and swore then that I wouldn't even touch this franchise for how horrible that movie was but I'm a completist. 

A fucking stupid completist...

You're welcome.