Fantasia Film Review: ‘The Wretched’

While vampires and zombies are evergreen horror movie favorites, the motion picture arts have not been particularly kind to that bush-league cousin, the killer tree-spirit.

Two of the better-known among relatively few examples are esteemed by bad movie aficionados: There was 1957’s drive-in special “From Hell It Came,” in which an actor lumbering around in a large tree-stump costume squeezed victims to death with his branches; and 1990’s “The Guardian,” a homicidal-wood-nymph thriller that flopped so badly director William Friedkin omitted any mention of it from his otherwise comprehensive career memoir.There will, happily, be no such cringing required by either makers or viewers of “The Wretched,” an accomplished second feature by Brett and Drew T.

Pierce (billed as “the Pierce Brothers”) that is good fun in a vaguely retro, “Lost Boys”-type teen horror way.

The absence of marquee value in cast or franchise terms may relegate it to home formats.

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