Trees are Watching, the latest film from Kurdish-Iranian writer/director Bahman Ghobadi, opens with the quote “Trees are not silent. They perceive, remember, and bear witness.” This is apt considering the malevolent spirit that’s haunting the film is, in fact, a wooden chair; it creeps, it lurks like a shadow under closed doors.
It even, in the climax, attacks in mid-air.
Sometimes this is handled very seriously, and the personified object has a dangerous appeal. Just as often, however, the self-seriousness of Trees are Watching is at odds with its execution, which slips into silliness and occasionally even outright comedy. Expect at least some folks to mockingly refer to this as “the Eva Green flying chair movie.”
Green is Darya, a London-based writer whose area of expertise is the city of Mardin, Turkey, where she grew up. At the start of the film, she and her hearing-impaired daughter Connie fly in for a month-long writing retreat. Darya elects to stay at the home of a childhood friend, and the large, isolated house – with its two large and distinct trees – immediately becomes a visual focal point. The trees will, naturally, have an important role to play in the narrative.
Almost immediately, strange events begin to occur: Darya’s rental car breaks down unexpectedly on the road, and a news report on the radio indicates that this is the second consecutive summer with unexplained forest fires. Then there’s the mysterious figure of a woman that Darya first sees on the road, and then again in the backyard by one of the trees.
All of this precedes the moment when Connie, then Darya, realizes that one of the chairs is moving of its own accord.
The threatening furniture is part of a larger backstory involving Darya’s childhood, twin classmate sisters Nihal and Spin, and their relationship with their mother (Ozlem Tas). This unfolds in lengthy flashbacks and features a pair of great child actors, though the twists and turns of the past are not as complicated or twisty as Ghobadi’s screenplay believes them to be.
Nihal upsets her mother with a series of drawings which anticipate a dark, calamitous fate for the family matriarch. Nihal herself is then scared by (an admittedly creepy) plumber who tells her a tall tale while fixing the family’s toilet; as a result, the young girl is scarred to such a degree that she becomes fearful of going to the bathroom by herself. This pair of events – angering mom and being scared to flush – initiates a disastrous series of events* that carry deadly implications that reverberate from past to present.
*One of these is a sequence that can only call to mind the log truck crash that opens Final Destination 2, but sadly features unconvincing CGI logs, which flattens the visual impact. Still, it nevertheless earns a hearty chuckle.
Meanwhile, Darya processes her role in these events while contending with the return of adult Spin (Zeynep Çamci), who appears and disappears like a specter. The disgruntled childhood friend urges Darya to exact revenge on several authority figures from their childhood, which in turn takes Darya to plenty of scary locations, such as the house’s secluded basement, as well as the file room of their former school (sadly there’s no montage with microfiche, but it’s not far off).
So far, so familiar. Thankfully, Green, who has never met a genre project she doesn’t fully commit to, anchors the film along with the dedicated child actors. For long stretches, it’s the performances that carry Trees are Watching.
Even when the plot meanders or becomes fairly predictable (ie: the truth about what happened to the sisters and their mother or what is happening with the chair), Trees are Watching is visually appealing. Ghobadi and cinematographer Saba Mazloum favor plenty of overhead shots of the landscape to emphasize the clear-cut logging in the area, and a brief, but gorgeous survey of Mardin’s underground city feels sponsored by Turkey’s tourism board. Many of the scary bits are surprisingly effective, such as when Connie glimpses the shadow of the chair’s legs moving beneath a door or a fleeting, uncanny glimpse of the chair nuzzling one of the trees.
The visuals can only carry the movie so far, though. The nearly 1 hour 50 minute runtime doesn’t feel entirely earned, especially with regard to the mystery from the past. It’s far too obvious, though Ghobadi’s screenplay doesn’t seem to realize that, as evidenced by the fact that the climax treats the truth as a reveal.
By this point, the disconnect between the film’s more poetic, environmental, and philosophical underpinnings and its genre elements is clear. An earlier passage explores the often ironic way that individuals are reincarnated as wooden objects. This is a fascinating proposition, but it feels completely incongruous with other aspects of the film, such as Darya battling a flying chair in an empty pool or pleading with police officer Vedad (Murat Yildirim) about her sanity and going off her meds.
The tonal and narrative imbalance results in a film that feels at odds with itself. Trees are Watching simply never comes together, despite solid performances and several intriguing ideas. Chalk this one up as an interesting misfire.
Trees Are Watching had its world premiere at TIFF 2026. Release information TBD.
