Treehouse

Welcome back to the sixth installment of our Into the Dark series. I’m here today with Treehouse that premiered March first of 2019, and to be honest, I don’t know what holiday this is supposed to be associated with. Each movie in the Into the Dark series is paired with a holiday-related to the month of the premiere. At first, I thought it was Arbor Day, but that takes place in April, and there was no way they were giving up April Fools as a theme. I don’t know any March holidays besides St. Patrick’s Day, and I didn’t see that here. I was so perplexed by this one that I went to the internet for answers. 

Typically, I don’t look at any reviews or opinions prior to seeing the movie, but I did know that this movie is considered by many to be the worst of all the films in the series. This, combined with my, and the internet’s, inability to actually determine which holiday it represents (looking at the holidays in March, I’m definitely going with International Women’s Day) left me with fairly low expectations.

The film starts out with a Gordon Ramsey-like celebrity chef named Peter Rake (played by Jimmi Simpson of Westworld) explaining to his daughter that they will definitely spend more time together when he gets the chance. After he sends her off to play mini-golf, he promptly leaves to visit his gigantic family home with his sister whom he hasn’t spoken to in three years. 

Immediately, I was getting the Haunting of Hill House vibe. Maybe this giant house is haunted. Maybe the chef is haunted and he’s going to face the ghosts of his past. When the aforementioned sister is called away to work, Peter decides to stay alone (except for the housekeeper, Agnes) and revel in the company of creepy paintings that his estranged father created of people who have died. 

During his time, he begins to see strange things in the house like a toilet full of blood, some bugs in a drawer, and a goat outside the window. Only none of these things happen at a scary time, nor does he seem particularly bothered by any of them. During a morning run, he finds a treehouse on the property that he spent a lot of time in as a kid, but he’s mad because “some jerk has put a weird thing on the thing”, and I’m still wondering what that means. 

I was joking earlier when I said Treehouse was an International Women’s Day film, but now I’m not so sure. It is possible that all the odd things happening could represent the Ides of March, but there are considerable themes of powerful women. A group of girls on a bachelorette weekend are staying next door to Peter and end up coming over for a night of drinking and trying some of his meals. During the evening, several conversations are had about motherhood, sisterhood, and women’s rights. 

One of the major characters is the housekeeper Agnes (played by Nancy Linehan Charles of Bram Stoker’s Dracula) who is sassy and weird and possibly haunted and I love her. The chemistry between her and Peter is amazing. Clearly, there is dislike, but with the familiarity of two people who have known each other for decades. Agnes is a means of comic relief, a strong female figure, and a terrifying source of confusion when she does things like staring into four mirrors at once and sticking her tongue out really really far.

Treehouse took exactly forty-three minutes to transform into any sort of horror film. While the plot was entertaining, and Jimmi Simpson was a joy to watch as always, I really couldn’t tell what was supposed to be scary about it. Aside from a few strange things happening around the house, this was just a story about a rich guy meeting some people on vacation and acting like a sexist pig. It was when the real plot kicked in that I realized why this movie got such a bad rap. 

I won’t spoil the plot twist, but I will say that things took a turn for the worse about half-way in. What had started out as a plausible situation took a turn to the entirely fantastical and ridiculous. Like many of the movies in this series, the plot twist involved kidnapping, but with an added layer that took things a little too far. At times, I felt that I was watching a SyFy movie. The sets were beautiful, and the filming was top quality, but a lot of the movie magic was ruined for me by how silly the plot became. 

An hour in and I’m completely convinced this is meant to be an International Women’s Day movie. I learned a lot of facts about Women’s Rights and the history of several different countries just from the lines of the main characters who took turns reciting what sounded like history books. Admittedly, this was important info, and it was interesting, but it doesn’t quite fit into a horror film.

There are essentially two storylines happening here – one dealing with Peter’s life and the choices he’s made and one involving the supernatural that I won’t detail for spoilers. One of them makes for a decent story and does well in shaping the main character as someone the audience is not supposed to like. The other pushes the boundaries of what I can take seriously. The dialogue is unnatural, the backstories of the characters are hinted at but never explained, and there isn’t one person in this movie that the audience cares about. 

Except Lonnie.

I loved Lonnie. Lonnie was literally just the guy that worked at the convenience store down the road from where the house was. Treehouse used the store as a place to introduce some good foreshadowing, but to also introduce us to Lonnie. I assume he was supposed to lead the audience to believe that he was some kind of potential threat. He kind of gives off the serial killer in the woods vibe, and he sends a very disturbing, sing-songy, high-pitched message to Peter’s sister (“Hey Gwennnniiieeeee”) which he sings to Peter and requests that he sings to Gwen. He doesn’t blink the entire time he’s on screen. Lonnie is the guy that everyone made fun of in school because he lacked the social skills to find a group of friends as easily as everyone else. Lonnie is the guy that rich jerks would pick on because he was an easy target. Lonnie was proud that he inherited the shop and insisted on paying for Peter’s cigarettes even though he was a famous chef because Lonnie wanted Peter to know he missed his company. I love Lonnie. 

There are several plot twists throughout the story, but the big one comes at the end, and it sort of forgives the campiness of the ‘scary’ scenes earlier on. However, there is another scene immediately afterward that contradicts that plot twist, and then another one right after that contradicts that one as well. This leaves the audience having no idea what was real the entire time. The end of Treehouse would have given me whiplash if I was at all invested in what was happening. 

Rating:

Fool on the Hill:

While I was watching Treehouse, I went back and forth deciding whether or not this was a good movie. The hallucinations are never explained. The supernatural aspect is left as ambiguous as possible so the audience could argue that it’s either real or not. Who is that lady at the end? Why was Agnes staring at her tongue in the mirror? Also, Peter’s past is also still up for debate, and he randomly goes to his ex-wife’s house and starts crying that he’s sorry he failed her. She doesn’t like this. And with those things, there are way too many plot holes for comfort. After seeing the whole thing, I don’t think I really know if it was a good movie or not. But I do know two things: I’m disappointed that this wasn’t an Arbor Day movie, and I definitely don’t feel a need to watch it again.

Jack Savage:

I don’t know if I would call Treehouse a horror film. It is definitely a thriller, but doesn’t really deliver on the scares.  There are lots of strange decisions on camera angles and b-roll that fills time more than fleshes out a character or the story. As far as the plot goes, I think it leans too heavy in the last third. More happens there than the rest of the movie and by the time it picks up I had nearly lost all interest.

 

Trailer: