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  • Abheer MeherishApoorva Arora...
  • HorrorMystery & Suspense...
  • Vikram Jayakumar
reviewed by
Yasmeen Mamdouh
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‎Behind the Trees: From Beautiful to Fearsome

Featured images – imdb.com

You have probably seen dozens – if not hundreds – of films that follow the happenings inside a haunted house. But which sounds scarier? A haunted house, or a haunted forest? Well, Behind the Trees quickly switches its beautifully scenic forest into a dreadful and fearsome place to be.

Behind the Trees follows couple, Amy (Vanessa Curry) and Jay (Sahil Shroff), who go on a romantic trip to a secluded resort near a village in India. The trip goes well until the couple stumble upon the exorcism of a young girl (Tvisha Seema), which takes place in the middle of the forest. When the girl is locked up in a container and left to die in the middle of a sugarcane field, the couple decided to save her. A struggle between scepticism and belief ensues; trying to determine whether the girl is innocent, or a very dark evil in disguise.

The plot is not as cliché as most horror films – there is no haunted house with a new family moving in or a slasher on the loose – but the exorcism bit, and even the saving, is not necessarily novel. While it does have a few twists and turns that cater to a horror fan’s taste, the film’s fails to grab the audience’s interest with the revelations.

The feature does not rely much on jump scares, violence, or blood. Instead, it builds suspense, growing a creepy aura around the forest, and that is when it works best. The film could have maintained the consistency of suspense, had it invested more in that gruesome aura, or, at least, delved deeper into the villager’s scary practices.

The characters’ train of thoughts is a little unjustified; one minute Amy is sure that the girl is just physically ill, and the next, she believes that she is possessed by an evil spirit. The same happened with Jay, perhaps in a more subtle way, leaving the audience clueless about whatever made them change their minds.

For the acting, unfortunately both Vanessa Curry and Sahil Shroff did not have the sufficient charisma to carry the feature that relied heavily on them. Both of their performances barely showed emotions, falling flat into mediocrity. Tvisha Seema did her part very well, balancing between playing innocent and creepy.

By not adhering to the genre’s beaten to death formulas, Behind the Trees is only a couple of inches above being called ‘a mediocre horror’. We have to admit that we’ve seen worse.

 

Like This? Try

The Exorcism of Emily Rose (2005) and Haunt (2019).

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