There are horror fans out there who’ll tell you that Capital-T Trauma Horror is over, but I don’t think that’s true. So much of the genre is rooted in the idea of trauma, how it transforms and binds and sometimes even frees us, that it’ll never completely go away, and it shouldn’t. There are lots of worthwhile things to say in that space.
The problem comes when storytellers embrace Trauma Horror as a vehicle, then don’t spend enough time building that vehicle to really move, to swerve, to rev its engine in ways that feel personal and singular. In the case of The Arborist, the vehicle is certainly there, but its assemblage is haphazard, stuffed full of so many bells and whistles that it barely moves. This is a movie that wants to be many things at once, and ends up being almost none of them.
The arborist of the title is Ellie (Lucy Walters), a single mom still reeling from the loss of her infant daughter to SIDS, which means she’s hyper-protective of her teenage son Wyatt (Hudson West), who still harbors tremendous guilt over his little sister’s loss. Together, mother and son head out for a job at the sprawling estate of the reclusive and mysterious Arthur (Will Lyman), who’s hired them to remove a group of marked trees in the woods near his mansion. Ellie needs the money, so she doesn’t ask too many questions, even when she realizes the trees are perfectly healthy and not in need of removal. But the longer she and Wyatt stay on Arthur’s property, the closer they get to a generational supernatural mystery that just might take Ellie’s last remaining child away.
There is a lot of promising atmosphere to kick off this film. It’s got some folk horror flourishes, a really weird opening sequence that immediately sets you on edge, and of course, the grim hammer of grief coming down on its characters as they try to get on with their lives. When you throw in Arthur’s sprawling home, grounds, and the crummy guest house where Ellie and Wyatt stay, you get a lot of potential energy, and the first act feels like it could really be something. Writer/Director Andrew Mudge sprinkles in a lot of fun ideas, ranging from an odd formation in the trees to the appearance of strange beings out in the woods, to drive the story forward.
But eventually, all these things have to find a way to coalesce, and it’s there that The Arborist loses all the ground it made up. The atmosphere, for what it’s worth, never quite leaves, in part because of the natural beauty and the locations and in part because Mudge clearly has a grasp of tone. But unless you’re willing to go very experimental, tone isn’t enough to make a film, and The Arborist‘s actual plot leans firmly toward the conventional. Which isn’t a problem, exactly, until you get to the solutions to all of these mysteries.
Without giving too much away, it all mostly ties together by the end, but it feels shoehorned rather than natural. It plays like a film that wanted to get all of the horror trappings out in front of the audience in the first half-hour to make sure they stick around, then never quite figured out a way to hang all of those trappings on something meaningful. The film’s eventual concussion makes up for this a little with certain revelations that heighten the emotional intensity, but by then it feels like too little, too late.
What makes this more frustrating is that the performers are all solid, generous actors who open themselves up to vulnerability at every turn, only to be muted by plotting that feels rote at best and disjointed at worst. There are so many good ideas floating around in here, and Walters, West, and Lyman do their best to represent them, but the script just doesn’t quite have it. It’s a swirling collection of tropes and horror concepts that, while effective, don’t always complement or enhance each other. An interesting visual or idea rolls into frame one second, then rolls out the next. It might come back, or it might just be a momentary bit of creepiness, but after a while, it’s simply distracting. The actors remain the focal points, but they’re constantly catching elbows from bits of horror esoterica that might be important to the plot or might just look cool for a second.
Like the trees that lie (barely) at the heart of its story, The Arborist has good roots. It’s got room to grow, and it feels like one of those movies that could have benefited from one more pass at the script, one more edit, one more pair of eyes to maybe pare it down, trim it in the right places, and allow it to flourish. Sadly, that didn’t happen, and we’re left with a film that’s almost something, like a stunted sapling.
The Arborist arrives on February 6 on Digital.