Every year people drag innumerable spruce, pine and fit trees out of their forest homes and into their front rooms to be dressed up in gaudy baubles as part of Christmas celebrations. And do those people spare a single thought for what the trees want? Of course not, though writer/director Jason Eisener (later director of Hobo with a Shotgun (2011) and contributor to both The ABCs of Death (2012) and V/H/S/2 (2013)) clearly has as his 16 minute short film Treevenge proves.

As Christmas approaches a gang of loutish, foul-mouthed and possibly beered-up men venture into the woods armed with chainsaws and axes and begin the annual massacre, hacking down trees as they plead – unheard by humans – for mercy, chattering to each other in their own high-pitched language, usefully subtitled for viewers. Trees are dragged off, erected in front rooms and given the usual slightly embarrassing overhauls with tinsel, balls and angels. But this year the trees have had enough and before the big day itself dawns, they take their bloody revenge on one small town in a brutal arboreal massacre.

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It’s all utter nonsense of course but everyone involved knows it and just have fun with the mad premise. Eisner is clearly a devotee of classic Italian gore films, using Riz Ortolani’s iconic score to Ruggero Deodato’s Cannibal Holocaust (1980) to top and tail the film and featuring a number of low budget but impressive enough gore scenes straight out of the Lucio Fulci playbook (eyeballs get a particularly hard time in Treevenge). There’s a particularly nasty scene involving a very young baby that may turn off some viewers but for the most part the gore is as ridiculous as the premise and, though not entirely convincing, the effects are fun.

Treevenge suffers the usual bugbears of ultra low budget film-making, particularly a reliance on distorting lenses and extreme close-ups, but Eisner keeps things cracking along at a decent clip and though you might accuse it of being many things, boring certainly wouldn’t be one of them. It even manages to be quite poignant in its own twisted way with the trees’ pathetic pleadings for mercy being strangely moving. That said, if you;re looking for serious ecological commentary you’re in the wrong place – Eisener is definitely on the side of the trees but, although you’ll never look at a flashily decorated Christmas tree the same way again, there’s no place in Treevenge for anything remotely serious. It’s just 16 minutes of nastiness and silliness and on that level it can only be judged a huge success.

You can watch the whole film (for now at least) on Youtube here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kicdSI_-XpE