Chabert Watch! The Lost Tree (2016)

Watched:  04/13/2025

Format:  Prime

Viewing:  First

Director:  Brian A. Metcalf

Woof.

The Lost Tree (2016)?  More like "lost me 30 seconds in".  Amirite?  Where are my Lost Tree bros?

To me, the thing that is most interesting about this very not-good movie is less the movie than digging in a bit to how Hollywood works/ worked.  It's famously a town of hustlers, and for a brief while in the late 90's and through the 00's, thanks to the power of indie film, some of that got celebrated as we had breakout films like Swingers.  But since Ed Wood got his hands on a fog machine, genre has also been a part of indie film made for no money, but hoping an idea and a performance will carry the day.

That does not happen here.

This movie is a mess from the start.  The camera-work is maybe not the best, and shot on consumer video as near as I can tell.  The audio in mostly fine, I guess, but the soundtrack/ score is doing some Olympic-class lifting, desperately trying to convince the viewer something is happening, and we're not just watching a dude wander around by himself in an empty cabin or an open field for insanely long stretches.

I will be honest and say:  I watched this movie and I can describe what happens in it, but if there's a story here with a point or an ironic twist, I am at a loss.  

Man in this movie (star/ producer Thomas Ian Nicholas) has just received a promotion, and calls his wife to tell her to make plans to celebrate.  He walks into the office a minute later, Chabert is there, confesses her lust for him, he suggests "yeah, we could do that" and... bum bum BUMMMM...  Wife is standing behind Man.  

Wife runs out the door and into traffic, I guess, because by the time Man makes it out the door, Wife is very dead.

Mourning, Man considers doing himself in, but his father (Michael Madsen!) tells him to get out of town.  So, he rents a cabin and goes.  

And here begins the portion of the movie in which time and logic run away - and not in a fun David Lynch dreamlike way.  More in a "why is this filmed, and why did they think this was good?" way.  We watch Man explore the house.  We watch man sit.  We watch Man ponder.  This takes up so, so much time.  And yet I've summed up like 20 minutes of the movie in those sentences.

Then magic starts.  There's bugs!  Maybe.  Perhaps magical bugs.  But we see bugs come out of a wall, which leads Man to look in the hole where he sees a painting behind some drywall.  He wanders out to go look at a pond, which is dry.  He keeps going and looks at a tree and is attacked by bugs again.  There are thumps that sound like a raccoon in in the attic, but we treat it as if it's a person.  

This is all post 2010, and no one wants a bad rental review, so why no one mentioned ghosts and magical pests in the listing, I do not know. Why he does not leave and ask for his money back, I further do not know. 

Anyway, ghostly and supernatural shit keeps happening.  He fails to complete a work assignment.  Chabert shows up, says she has to use the bathroom, and does not close the door and does not use any running water either at the sink or at the toilet.  She stares at herself in the mirror until a ghost kinda gropes her and she flips out and runs away.  Unlike Man, she is aware that this is a ghost.

The ghosts text.  They email.  They turn lights on and off.  They are busy ghosts. They bother him at night.  They appear in photos as silhouettes only Zak Bagans could love.

Why does Man stay there?  They pull the usual "the dead wife is calling" business, which he doesn't need to be at the cabin to deal with.  So, yeah, it's kinda like that.  It nails 2/3rds of the Aristotelian Unities, but missed the narrative notion where people should have motivations and we care about them somehow.

Y'all...  this movie is just a series of things happening, and then they kill Chabert.  At the end, they also kill Man.  

We were supposed to get a bunch of information about what's happening from us looking at newspaper articles and text messages and computer screens, but none of it was legible in the version of the movie I watched.  All I got was "oh, people died at that house and there was a lady named Claudia who was involved."  I don't know who she was, if she lives there, what her deal was, or who died.  

We see Claudia at the end.  I have no idea what she wanted or what her connection was to Man.  She looks like someone who got lost en route to a RenFest.  

I don't think Thomas Ian Nicholas is bad in this.  The movie is just horribly shot and edited.  There's no editor listed, which leads me to believe this was also done by Metcalf.  And when directors do this, they're not able to determine what is required and what is not.  

It's all pretty rough going.

Late edit:  Is it stupid?

Oh, lordy. Yes.

(a special note:  I wrote most of the "what happened" part the morning after I watched this.  It is now less than 24 hours later, and I can't remember most of this movie.  I was sober as a church mouse whilst watching, too.)

So...  was Chabert on an applebox, or is this dude 5'0"?

But as I say, I'm way more interested in the weird part of Hollywood that swings for the fences and works to make their own indies like this, hoping it will lead to bigger things.  What happened here seems like there's a story that's much better than the movie itself.

I don't know who Brian A. Metcalf is, but he wrote and directed this movie with his pal, child star and American Pie guy, Thomas Ian Nicholas, and the pair seem to have continued making things together, which I find admirable.  Sometimes you stand by each other even if the final product is an incomprehensible, unwatchable mess.

I can only look at the evidence to piece together what occurred.  It's clearly one of those movies where they did an inventory of what they had on hand, or could get for cheap.  A cabin.  Thomas Ian Nicholas.  A budget for a couple of name actors.  A tree.  A pal who does CGI.

Writer/ Director Metcalf has only a handful of credits, and almost all of them are self-written and directed efforts (of course he has a cameo in this, because Hitchock!).  The money is coming from somewhere, so I have to assume Metcalf is the beloved child of someone with deep pockets.  Meanwhile, Thomas Ian Nicholas - who was in Rookie of the Year and a bunch of other stuff as a kid - has maybe not been getting the roles he once did.  Was he using this to prove he still had the goods?  I can't say.  To just keep working in films?  Maybe.

There's a mysterious Executive Producer named Ben Chan, who must be a guy they know who has money and likes saying "hey, I made a movie".  But I'm gonna be honest - I am not digging through everyone named Ben Chan on LinkedIn to learn more.  His IMDB photo makes him just look like a normal guy.  He may not exist.  He may.  This shall be as mysterious and elusive as the plot to our film.

Michael Madsen can best be described as "available" in this movie.  He's fine.  But he's Michael Madsen, and his energy is Michael Madsen. 

Which leaves us with Lacey Chabert.  

She's fine.  She has the right energy and seems polished.  She's game for scenes where she's chased by ghosts carrying a kitchen knife.

The most chilling part of this is that I came across this (possible) factoid on IMDB:

Corey Feldman, who was Lacey Chabert's spiritual advisor at the time, pleaded with her not to do this movie, and do Christian Mingle instead. She ended up doing both.

First:  yes, we will absolutely be watching Christian Mingle, a movie sponsored by and about Christian dating site Christian Mingle.  

Second: if you kept up with Corey Feldman the past twenty years or so - and this movie was shot probably a couple of years before its 2016 release - I am now retroactively concerned for Chabert if this happens to have any basis in fact.  I bare Feldman no ill-will, but how sideways have things gone when you look to Corey Feldman for spiritual guidance?  

I'm also really wondering how much money was involved vs. how much time was required.  It looks like maybe, at the most, a week of shooting for Chabert.  

And for what the movie is, I think Chabert is pretty good!  But, I am not sure anyone comes out of this movie looking like Meryl Streep thanks to *gestures broadly at movie*.

Anyway, this isn't quite Manos: The Hands of Fate, but it's also not not Manos: The Hands of Fate.  Minus Torgo.

What's wild is that they did make promotional videos.  They rented out the TLC Chinese Theater for the premier, and there's a bunch of videos from the event from what sounds like a promo-for-hire outfit on YouTube, each raking up dozens of views.  Like, despite what the product was, someone knew basically what you needed to do to fake a real movie's premier and release.  Of course, the actors in the promo material sound like they've been given things to say.  But... I mean, you never heard of this movie before, I assume, so... how'd that work out?