Saw this at the Leeuwarden (NL) film festival 2023. It took a lot of time before tension kicked in, growing slowly, adding plot elements one at a time. The underlying building blocks cover ten years at least, involving two generations, thus requiring flashbacks to explain the circumstances. Those flashbacks are sometimes confusing, particularly at first, while not immediately making clear that we are watching a flashback. It took some time to recognize the faces, thus allowing us indirectly to date the scene at hand.
A nice touch is the ecological component and the unusual year ring patterns in the trees around the house. It is all much more important than it appears upfront. A more common plot element is the unwanted (according to the parents) baby being aborted some 10 years ago. All three main protagonists carry similar past issues along with them. The threesome has a harmonic relationship at the surface, but every now and then there boils up something unspoken, for example "why didn't you tell me you are divorced?", leading to a hefty explanation that did not clear the situation but rather drove them apart.
There were only a few jump scares, luckily not the main course on the menu and not really important for the tense atmosphere either. Of course, an isolated house takes care of plenty atmosphere by itself. There were no neighbors, it was located in the middle of vast forest area, and it was even more isolated while needing a ferry to get there. It is amazing that there was electricity in working order, although the first light that was switched on, died very soon after for no obvious reason.
All in all, though no groundbreaking masterpiece, it works on me after the time I needed to let the plot grow on me. The ecological elements offer a novel approach to the Horror genre, the importance of which escaped me in the beginning, letting me think that the old derelict house and its buried family secrets were the main course on the menu.
It needs some adjustment to realize that there are more dangers outside, in any case other than mad neighbors or wild animals. Here it is something more sinister even (no details, no spoilers). I was immediately aware when seeing that trees can count. Far from a traditional jump scare, but it nevertheless worked on me that way. And it fully explains the film title. I scored 4 out of 5 for the audience award when leaving the venue.
A nice touch is the ecological component and the unusual year ring patterns in the trees around the house. It is all much more important than it appears upfront. A more common plot element is the unwanted (according to the parents) baby being aborted some 10 years ago. All three main protagonists carry similar past issues along with them. The threesome has a harmonic relationship at the surface, but every now and then there boils up something unspoken, for example "why didn't you tell me you are divorced?", leading to a hefty explanation that did not clear the situation but rather drove them apart.
There were only a few jump scares, luckily not the main course on the menu and not really important for the tense atmosphere either. Of course, an isolated house takes care of plenty atmosphere by itself. There were no neighbors, it was located in the middle of vast forest area, and it was even more isolated while needing a ferry to get there. It is amazing that there was electricity in working order, although the first light that was switched on, died very soon after for no obvious reason.
All in all, though no groundbreaking masterpiece, it works on me after the time I needed to let the plot grow on me. The ecological elements offer a novel approach to the Horror genre, the importance of which escaped me in the beginning, letting me think that the old derelict house and its buried family secrets were the main course on the menu.
It needs some adjustment to realize that there are more dangers outside, in any case other than mad neighbors or wild animals. Here it is something more sinister even (no details, no spoilers). I was immediately aware when seeing that trees can count. Far from a traditional jump scare, but it nevertheless worked on me that way. And it fully explains the film title. I scored 4 out of 5 for the audience award when leaving the venue.