Watch Trees 2: The Root of All Evil For Free

Absolutely brilliant

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

This is the follow up to the 2000 effort Trees, which was a homage to Jaws. This, however, tries to flesh out the story. In the original the town of Hazlewood is terrorized by a great white pine. In this the town is beset by a horde of Killer Christmas trees. I did think that the original was a bit interesting, but this did not live up to that one. It looks like this had a bigger cast and more in the budget and the general look of the film was more professional. However if there was any film that shouted out "less is more" then it's this one. I feel that showing the Killer Christmas trees so frequently and full frame was a mistake, as the CGI that was used for this effects was poor and instead of adding anything, just made it look silly. The cast seem to take it seriously enough, but I really struggled through this one. In the films defense. This may have been due to the poor sound quality on my copy of the DVD and I really struggled to hear what was going on, which did not help.

Most of the main cast of the Jaws spoof "Trees" return for this sequel that adds Horshack to the mix. This time around the main villain are Christmas trees. This film, while having its moments comes nowhere near as good as the first film. It goes off on tangents fairly often and just isn't as funny. Whereas I found myself laughing or chuckling at a good 80% of the original, I managed to laugh less here, even though it was a bit of a longer movie. It's humorous but some of the sub-plots and even some characters could've been left on the cutting room floor without harming the film in the least bit. And those flashbacks could've been done away with to as long as I'm on the subject.

Flesh-eating, genetically mutated trees are running rampant in the ski resort of Hazelville; Ranger Cody (Kevin McCauley) and botanist Max Cooper (Phil Gardiner) try to alert the locals to the danger, but their progress is hampered by Bentley and Royce (Brandi Coppock and Brian Reid), two National Forestry Service agents who are part of a conspiracy to cover up the existence of the carnivorous Great White Pines.If you haven't already twigged from the above synopsis, The Root of all Evil, from writer/director Michael Pleckaitis, is a dumb, low-budget parody of Jaws, only with man eating trees instead of sharks—which sounds like it could be a lot of fun, but isn't.Although Pleckaitis does a commendable job with both the direction and editing, his scriptwriting skills are far less impressive: the characters are weak spoofs of those in Spielberg's classic movie (Cody rhymes with Brody, Cooper with Hooper, and there's even another character called Squint!), the dialogue is terrible, and the humour is dreadfully puerile. To make matters even worse, the cast are simply awful (the trees are less wooden than the actors), and the monster-tree special effects are embarrassing (achieved by z-grade CGI that would have looked bad in a mid-90s video game).If the approach taken had been much trashier, with outrageous OTT gore and nudity to help compensate for its crappier qualities, then this might have been a blast—a demented nutzoid effort destined for cult status. As it stands, however, it's an unmitigated disaster.

The Root of All Evil starts just outside the small American town of Hazelville where local resident Fang (Tom Erb) & his gang break into a National Forestry Service area & cut down various pine trees so he can sell them to the residents of Hazelville as Christmas tree's. Meanwhile Max Cooper (Phil Gardiner) has been trying to convince the authorities that the events of Trees (2000) actually happened, in yet another attempt he travels to Hazelville again to team up with another survivor from the original forest Ranger Cody (Kevin McCauley) who just wants to forget all about killer tree's. But when a local senator is killed on a ski slope Max insists a killer great white pine tree, or a 'Pinus Strobus', was responsible & he fears every house in Hazelville may have one in the run to Christmas...Co-written, produced & directed by Michael Pleckaitis I have a really hard time understanding how anyone can genuinely enjoy a low budget piece of crap such as The Root of All Evil, to be honest this isn't much more than a glorified home video. The jokey script by Pleckaitis & Jim Lawter seems to exist for no other reason than to parody Jaws (1975) by using killer tree's instead of a shark & it's sequels as well as a few other notable films, from the Ranger whose name is Cody which is an obvious reference to Roy Scheider's character in Jaws the police Chief Brody, there's the selfish Mayor who refuses to do anything for fear of bad publicity, there's the blurred photo's which Cody believes is solid proof but no one else agrees, they even refer to the killer tree's as great white pine's & there are other numerous homages littered through The Root of All Evil which I can't be bothered to go into. The character's are awful, the dialogue just as much & once the initial joke wears off which doesn't take too long I can assure you this is a pretty painful film to try & sit through & at over 100 minutes it outstays it's welcome. The only positive thing I can say about it is that there are a couple of occasions where the parody works & it's almost amusing but these are few & far between I'm afraid.Director Pleckaitis actually does a reasonable job & to be fair to it The Root of All Evil looks reasonably professional. However the CGI computer effects are absolutely awful, unless you have literally a multi million budget you just cannot produce convincing CGI effects & they almost always turn out terrible & The Root of All Evil is no exception. The killer tree's themselves look rubbish & then there's a huge monster thing at the end which looks & moves like it belongs in some cheap 90's video game. There is no gore whatsoever apart from some fake blood. It's certainly not scary, there's no tension & it's definitely not funny so why does a film like this actually exist?With a supposed budget of about $150,000 the filmmakers probably did the best they could on a small amount of money but my argument is that doesn't excuse it from being crap & not worth spending good money on to watch. The acting sucks & McCauley who plays Ranger Cody looks very much like Roy Scheider which I doubt is a coincidence.The Root of All Evil the sequel to Trees that nobody wanted is rubbish, I'm sorry the low budget doesn't excuse it from being painful to sit through, definitely one to avoid.