Editorials
‘Boys in the Trees’: Celebrating Halloween with Bittersweet Magic
‘Tis the Night…
The Night of the graves’ delight…
Nicholas Verso’s 2016 Boys in the Trees (available on Netflix) is a beautiful film and a really unique addition to your Halloween viewing. It captures the essence of the season and uses it in an entirely new way to tell its story. Rather than a full-on frightfest or creature feature, it harnesses that energy and uses it to tell a bittersweet coming of age tale about how friendships can bend, break, and be reforged in the throes of adolescence.
Set in an Australian suburb in the late 1990s, the film opens on the afternoon of Halloween. In Australia, this means that school is just getting out for the summer, and after exams have passed, our protagonist, Corey (Toby Wallace), will be entering into adulthood with no real idea of what he wants to do with himself. He has dreams of going to New York to study photography. His father wants him to stay close and study something more practical, and his gang of trouble-making, miscreant friends want him to join them in simply continue living as if their teen years will last forever.
As Corey and his friends hang out at the local skate park, their leader, Jango (Justin Holborow) spies classmate, Jonah (Gulliver McGrath) among the small crowd. Jonah is a solitary boy. Small and quiet, he makes an easy target for Jango and his pack, and they do not hesitate to pounce. Jango approaches Jonah and orders him out of the park, pushing him down onto the concrete. Corey snaps a photo of Jonah in that moment, as the bullied boy looks up with shame and defeat in his eyes. Corey has little interest in Jango’s cruel torments, but he wants more than anything to run with the crowd. So he says nothing, offers no aid to Jonah, and follows the group out of the park and on to their evening of Halloween pranks.
As Corey tires of his friends’ antics, he wanders back to the skate park where he once again encounters Jonah. The smaller boy has fallen off of his board and cracked his head on the concrete. Corey rushes to his side, and though Jonah appears okay, he convinces Corey to walk him home.
“You owe me, old pal.” he says, as the two walk off together. You see, Jonah and Corey are not vaguely familiar faces that pass each other in the hallway. The two have a history. A childhood friendship that spanned all of reality and into the world of make-believe. As the two walk, they begin to once again embrace that world. The remember songs they once sang, stories they held dear, and a game of imagination that they would inhabit as children, but has long since been forgotten as adulthood has crept ever closer.
Over the course of Halloween night, as the pair wanders around town, reminiscing, reconnecting and trying to overcome the gap that has come between them over the years, Verso uses his story to illustrate the ways in which the simple act of growing up can pull us apart. We all have people who were our best friends in childhood, but whose names we can barely remember now. Life takes us in different directions, but what this film points out, is that it happens earlier than we ever expect it will. Childhood fantasies and bonds become nothing more than distant memories in the blink of an eye, and the worlds that we create together become simply fairytales.
Halloween is a magical night. It is an evening that carries its own sense of mystery and wonder and a magic that cannot be found on any other day of the year. This film harnesses that magic and uses it to tap into childhood fantasies. So even though the film isn’t scary, it does have that air about it. That mysterious nature that the walls between the world of reality and everything beyond have been thinned for just a few hours. On that night, our dreams, fantasies and memories are all more readily accessible, along with our fears. Boys in the Trees is a film that reminds us of that magic and uses it to tell a bittersweet tale of friendship and growing up.
Having grown up in a religious family, Christian movie night was something that happened a lot more often than I care to admit. However, back when I was a teenager, my parents showed up one night with an unusually cool-looking DVD of a movie that had been recommended to them by a church leader. Curious to see what new kind of evangelical propaganda my parents had rented this time, I proceeded to watch the film with them expecting a heavy-handed snoozefest.
To my surprise, I was a few minutes in when Denzel Washington proceeded to dismember a band of cannibal raiders when I realized that this was in fact a real movie. My mom was horrified by the flick’s extreme violence and dark subject matter, but I instantly became a fan of the Hughes Brothers’ faith-based 2010 thriller, The Book of Eli. And with the film’s atomic apocalypse having apparently taken place in 2024, I think this is the perfect time to dive into why this grim parable might also be entertaining for horror fans.
Originally penned by gaming journalist and The Walking Dead: The Game co-writer Gary Whitta, the spec script for The Book of Eli was already making waves back in 2007 when it appeared on the coveted Blacklist. It wasn’t long before Columbia and Warner Bros. snatched up the rights to the project, hiring From Hell directors Albert and Allen Hughes while also garnering attention from industry heavyweights like Denzel Washington and Gary Oldman.
After a series of revisions by Anthony Peckham meant to make the story more consumer-friendly, the picture was finally released in January of 2010, with the finished film following Denzel as a mysterious wanderer making his way across a post-apocalyptic America while protecting a sacred book. Along the way, he encounters a run-down settlement controlled by Bill Carnegie (Gary Oldman), a man desperate to get his hands on Eli’s book so he can motivate his underlings to expand his empire. Unwilling to let this power fall into the wrong hands, Eli embarks on a dangerous journey that will test the limits of his faith.
SO WHY IS IT WORTH WATCHING?
Judging by the film’s box-office success, mainstream audiences appear to have enjoyed the Hughes’ bleak vision of a future where everything went wrong, but critics were left divided by the flick’s trope-heavy narrative and unapologetic religious elements. And while I’ll be the first to admit that The Book of Eli isn’t particularly subtle or original, I appreciate the film’s earnest execution of familiar ideas.
For starters, I’d like to address the religious elephant in the room, as I understand the hesitation that some folks (myself included) might have about watching something that sounds like Christian propaganda. Faith does indeed play a huge part in the narrative here, but I’d argue that the film is more about the power of stories than a specific religion. The entire point of Oldman’s character is that he needs a unifying narrative that he can take advantage of in order to manipulate others, while Eli ultimately chooses to deliver his gift to a community of scholars. In fact, the movie even makes a point of placing the Bible in between equally culturally important books like the Torah and Quran, which I think is pretty poignant for a flick inspired by exploitation cinema.
Sure, the film has its fair share of logical inconsistencies (ranging from the extent of Eli’s Daredevil superpowers to his impossibly small Braille Bible), but I think the film more than makes up for these nitpicks with a genuine passion for classic post-apocalyptic cinema. Several critics accused the film of being a knockoff of superior productions, but I’d argue that both Whitta and the Hughes knowingly crafted a loving pastiche of genre influences like Mad Max and A Boy and His Dog.
Lastly, it’s no surprise that the cast here absolutely kicks ass. Denzel plays the title role of a stoic badass perfectly (going so far as to train with Bruce Lee’s protégée in order to perform his own stunts) while Oldman effortlessly assumes a surprisingly subdued yet incredibly intimidating persona. Even Mila Kunis is remarkably charming here, though I wish the script had taken the time to develop these secondary characters a little further. And hey, did I mention that Tom Waits is in this?
AND WHAT MAKES IT HORROR ADJACENT?
Denzel’s very first interaction with another human being in this movie results in a gory fight scene culminating in a face-off against a masked brute wielding a chainsaw (which he presumably uses to butcher travelers before eating them), so I think it’s safe to say that this dog-eat-dog vision of America will likely appeal to horror fans.
From diseased cannibals to hyper-violent motorcycle gangs roaming the wasteland, there’s plenty of disturbing R-rated material here – which is even more impressive when you remember that this story revolves around the bible. And while there are a few too many references to sexual assault for my taste, even if it does make sense in-universe, the flick does a great job of immersing you in this post-nuclear nightmare.
The excessively depressing color palette and obvious green screen effects may take some viewers out of the experience, but the beat-up and lived-in sets and costume design do their best to bring this dead world to life – which might just be the scariest part of the experience.
Ultimately, I believe your enjoyment of The Book of Eli will largely depend on how willing you are to overlook some ham-fisted biblical references in order to enjoy some brutal post-apocalyptic shenanigans. And while I can’t really blame folks who’d rather not deal with that, I think it would be a shame to miss out on a genuinely engaging thrill-ride because of one minor detail.
With that in mind, I’m incredibly curious to see what Whitta and the Hughes Brothers have planned for the upcoming prequel series starring John Boyega…
There’s no understating the importance of a balanced media diet, and since bloody and disgusting entertainment isn’t exclusive to the horror genre, we’ve come up with Horror Adjacent – a recurring column where we recommend non-horror movies that horror fans might enjoy.
Looking for New Episodes of “Chucky” on Peacock? Here’s What Changed
‘Mountain Man’ – Joe Manganiello Will Battle Zombies in Upcoming Horror Movie
‘The Blair Witch Project’ – Original Stars Release a Statement Asking Lionsgate for Residuals & Recognition
‘Trap’ – Official Trailer Previews a Wild New Horror Experience from M. Night Shyamalan
‘Halloween: Illustrated’ Review: Original Novelization of John Carpenter’s Classic Gets an Upgrade
You must be logged in to post a comment.