Review #339: Arbor Demon (2016)
October 2025 Holiday Horror Review #12 - Arbor Demon (2016)
So, this is the type of movie I was afraid I would encounter when making the list for this October's movies: a movie that seems like it's themed along a specific holiday, but it actually isn't. Wikipedia had Arbor Demon listed as being an Arbor Day movie, but as far as I could tell the movie never mentions Arbor Day a single time (I even re-watched the beginning a couple times to make sure they didn't briefly mention the date or show a calendar or something; if there was such an indicator I missed it, and I looked pretty hard). Yeah the title of the movie evokes Arbor Day, but "arbor" just means "tree" so it tracks that this movie is about a tree demon (or something like it). Apparently it didn't even have the same title during development- it was originally called "Enclosure" so it seems unlikely that Arbor Day was an integral part of the film at any point.
Anyway!
Arbor Demon follows a married couple, Dana and Charles, who are going on a camping trip so Charles can take some photos for the next album his rock band is coming out with before he goes on tour. Dana is pregnant (evidenced by the fact that she is a woman who throws up in a Hollywood film) but has not told Charles because he doesn't want to have kids. When on their camping trip, some nearby locals attract some kind of monster that kills all but one of them- Dana and Charles rescue the survivor, a man named Sean, and bring him back to their tent. Sean reveals that the monster is some kind of legendary figure that seeks out pregnant women and kills everyone else, so that it can take their baby to create more of its kind. This leads to the reveal that Dana is pregnant, and also that Sean is hunting this monster because it took his wife and their unborn daughter. The trio try to escape, some lines get crossed, some people turn sides, and it turns out these monsters are kind of just like... tree people, or something.
I'm gonna be perfectly honest: I found this movie incredibly boring and hard to pay attention to. I feel like this should have been my jam- generally speaking, I enjoy movies that have a small number of characters, movies that take place mostly in one location, and movies with interesting worldbuilding and tension between characters. This one had all of that, but it also felt like it had... nothing? So much of this movie takes place in a tent with characters arguing. Literally like half the movie is just three people in a tent. Until about the one hour mark you never see any part of the monster that's killing everyone- which is another thing that I tend to enjoy, as it can really add to a film by creating an air of mystery, but in this movie it felt like a crutch rather than an intentional choice. Which is weird, because the makeup and effects on the tree people are actually really, really good! The way they look was probably the best part of the entire movie. But so much of this film just failed to grab my attention in any meaningful way, and it felt like a slog from beginning to end. There were parts where I started to grow some interest (like when Dana encounters one of the tree people for the first time and it makes a connection with her) but then something would happen to wrench the movie back into "three people sit in a tent and argue" mode and I would lose interest again.
I can tell a lot of work went into this movie and there's probably someone out there that thinks this film is super underrated, but unfortunately that person is not me.
Overall Rating: 4/10 Gunshots in an Enclosed Space
A Little Nitpick From Me: I wasn't sure where else to put this, but: in the movie, Dana is recently pregnant, so when she encounters the tree people, they like, do some tree magic or something to rapidly advance her pregnancy so over the course of the film- which all takes place over one or two days- she goes from being barely pregnant to full-on pregnant with a huge belly. I understand this is necessary for the plot because a big deal was made about how her husband doesn't realize she's pregnant and he doesn't want kids, so I get why they had her not be far enough along to show. But there IS a real-life condition known as "cryptic pregnancy", where a woman gives birth without realizing she was pregnant due to a variety of factors causing her to not have a visible baby bump. I just think it's weird that they hand-wave some magic reason for why she suddenly has a huge belly- as if the time spent developing inside their mother isn't important for a baby- when they could have just had her be cryptically pregnant, thus satisfying the childfree subplot and the tree people needing a live birth without resorting to magic. Do some research when making a movie, people! Not everything needs to be magic!
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