A naïve, young girl makes a deal with the devil and has to live with the consequences for the rest of her life.
In a small European village called Orchard, Faith, a non-popular sophomore is living her life being pushed around and having to deal with a sick father. But, things start looking up when her new mysterious field hockey coach puts Faith on the senior team and her crush begins to take notice of her. Suddenly her sick father takes a turn for the worse and has only a few months to live. Faith’s new coach, Sissy, reveals herself as a powerful witch that is willing to strike a deal that would save her father’s life. Eagerly Faith accepts and is tricked into conceiving and bearing the devil’s own child. When their agreement doesn’t go as planned, Faith risks everything she loves to get back at Sissy and her coven.
Even though this is a B-horror movie the scare tactics are few and far between. The film is scattered with half-hearted attempts at jump scares that rarely builds suspense. The overacting nearly kills the film from the very beginning with Sissy, played by Anna Walton, constantly glaring at Faith, played by Naomi Battrick. She has one facial expression throughout the entire film which is her head tilted slightly forward so she can creepily glare upwards through her sloping brow at anyone in her path. Someone should have warned her if she made that face too long, it would stick that way because it certainly does. The naivety of the main character Faith goes beyond the average high school horror film where the audience screams at the screen because the characters are continuously oblivious of their surroundings and poor life choices. The viewers for this film would rarely care to pipe up for Faith because she’s not a fully developed character to really invest in too much anyways.
The story moves slowly forward but has an exasperating amount of plot holes. For example, more and more people that Faith knows pop up in Sissy’s coven and Faith even goes as far as to ask, “You’re in on this too?” which makes the viewer all too aware of the comical anything goes approach of a poorly structured storyline and plot. By the time the climax arrives the viewer is begging to be put out of their misery. One positive aspect of Cherry Tree is the great use of special effects makeup as the budget was probably most well spent on the effects and makeup which added a great aesthetic to somewhat mask the horrible story and poor acting.
Overall if given the opportunity to view another out of season horror film, I would rather wait for Krampus to come out on video on demand or Redbox before watching this film. Or you could go see Star Wars again.
Cherry Tree has a runtime of 85 minutes.
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