hyped garbage

The movie is wonderful and true, an act of love in all its contradictions and complexity

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

The town of Hazelville is besieged by a great white pine in this spoof on Jaws.From the outset this film lays down it roots (sorry) with a title card stating that in 1975 Jaws broke all box office records and this film is a 25th anniversary homage to that film. A lot of the scenes from Jaws are replicated with substituting the shark with a tree. A dumb idea that kinda works and your enjoyment factor for this film will depend on your knowledge of Jaws, as you will have a greater understanding of what the filmmakers were trying to achieve. Yes it's low budget, but the film is quite well made and there is a great deal to see and it appears the budget was used well. The film appears to be shot on woodland locations, with a lot of actors and props to add to the look of the film. For example in one scene there is a number of real fire engines attending a incident. Most low budget films could not stretch to such extravagance. My fairly low rating for this film is due to not having a great knowledge of Jaws, so some of the "homages" may have been lost on me and I did find my mind wandering from time to time. However I can appreciate that this is a film that tries it's best and has good intentions. This film "branched" out (Sorry again) and spawned a sequel Trees 2, The root of all evil

Trees is set in the small Vermont town of Hazelville in the US where forest Ranger Mark Cody (Kevin McCauley) gets a phone-call to inform him that a teenage girl is missing in his forest, eventually Cody & his Rangers find her mutilated remains. At first the coroner confirms it was a Tree attack but after local mayor Swindell (Raymond Michaud) puts the pressure on the coroner changes their mind & puts it down to a lawnmower accident, Cody calls in Tree expert Max Cooper (Phil Gardiner) & he feels a Great White Pine is loose in the forest killing anyone it comes across. With memorial day weekend fast approaching the mayor doesn't want any bad publicity that might harm the town's tourism business but Cody & Cooper are convinced more innocent campers & hikers will die at the leaves of the killer Tree & set out to cut it down to size...Set decoration, production design, co-casting, co-edited, co-executive produced, written & directed by Michael Pleckaitis who also gets credits for special effects, carpentry & sound effects this is essentially a rather bland parody of Jaws (1975) with silly killer Trees instead of a Great White Shark, if it sounds stupid to you then don't worry because it is. The entire plot of Trees is an exact copy of Jaws as the forest replaces the ocean, a killer Tree replaces the Shark, campers replace tourists, there's the town mayor who doesn't want any bad publicity, there's the kid that gets killed & the angry mother, Cooper the Tree expert is here instead of the Shark expert in Jaws, amateur hunters kill a Tree & the two leads open it up to discover no human body parts, the final confrontation features kegs on chains & an explosive end for the Tree menace while the hardened old hunter goes from Quint the Shark killer to Squint the lumberjack who even gets to tell an old story about how his war mates were massacred by a killer Tree. Obviously not taking itself seriously Trees has an outrageous concept & is very silly but it's main downfall is that it's simply not funny in the slightest & while trying to send-up a genuine classic comes across as a very, very poor relation. Virtually every scene or line of dialogue is a homage or rip-off (whichever way you look at it) of Jaws in some way, to be brutally honest you would be much better off just watching Jaws again. At a shade over 85 minutes in length Trees might have worked better as an hour long short rather than a full blown feature film as the material goes stale very, very quickly. There's just not enough here to sustain an entire film, as I said the entire plot follows Jaws almost exactly so it's utterly predictable & the only laughs come from whether you find the idea of a killer Tree funny or not. Which I didn't.Besides Jaws this film also references a few other's like the eating game from Cool Hand Luke (1967) & The Blair Witch Project (1999) after a film can labelled 'Witch Project' is found inside a Tree in what I thought was the films single most amusing moment. Obviously shot on a tiny budget there are no special effects to speak of, there's a severed leg & a moving Tree but nothing else, the moving Tree looks pretty bad like it's just some production crew member with branches stuck on them running around. Stick around for the end credits as they feature lots of bloopers & mistakes as actor's get their lines wrong or the cameraman falls over while running through the woods. Even though I have seen the sequel Trees 2: The Root of All Evil (2004) because my review of it is on the IMDb I cannot remember a single thing about it although I also gave that three stars so I couldn't have liked it that much.Shot entirely on digital video Trees looks cheap, it looks like the sort of film you would make with a camcorder from the 90's. Filmed in Connecticut. The acting is poor, I am sure Kevin McCauley got the lead role because of his resemblance to Roy Scheider.Trees is basically a camp comedy send-up of Jaws, the main problem as I saw it was that Trees just isn't funny in the slightest & the one note joke gets old & tiresome very fast. They even shamelessly rip-off the classic line 'we're going to need a bigger boat' with 'we're going to need a bigger axe', if that sounds funny to you then you might like Trees & if it doesn't you probably, like me, won't.

You can't get a better tribute to jaws, this movie had me laughing so hard. First lets look at the characters. From Jaws to Trees, Brodie became Cody (they actually look a bit a like), Quint became squint and hopper became cooper. Then you take the shark and make it a tree, Genius. OK, so next we swap the sea for a camp site and you've got one hell of a tribute. The script is full of cheese and the acting is awful, but there's something oddly entertaining here. When you get great lines like "where gonna need a bigger axe" and "get out of the woods" you know your onto a winner. The story follows jaws almost identically, with the obvious differences. If you want a great b-movie thats gonna crack you up then watch this, i have to find the sequel, i'm sure that too is gonna be awesome. But don't take my word on it, find it, watch it, enjoy it. Trees is one of the most entertaining movies i've ever seen. AWESOME

Yeah okay, it is low budget, and yeah the acting is horrible, but you have to see this movie to believe it, they did such a great parody of Jaws here, even down to the names and dialogue. You must watch this film, grab a brew, open some chips and just forget everything that you know about movies, just enjoy, you will be amazed at how crap like this can be so good....and if you can then watch the sequel also. You will not be too upset. I got this in a box set, I think Catacomb of Creepshows, from Pendulum Pictures, really not the best way to buy movies, out of the 50 you get about 5 good films and another dozen that are watchable, but hey I am in Iraq with nothing better to watch.