Lemon Tree Passage (2014) Reviews

• Should have made Lemonade......

  FlashCallahan2015-01-15

  Two Australian men introduce three American backpackers to the legend of Lemon Tree Passage, where a ghost warns young drivers to slow down. After seeing the ghost, they uncover a force that haunts the area, and starts to shroud them. Isolated and miles from home, the tourists find themselves caught in an evil force much more hideous than the stories that have been told.... What could have been a nice little Antipodean horror movie, gets bogged down by it's own cleverness, and poor acting from the cast. It starts off well enough, two parties on the beach exchange stories, and go on to pursue one of the stories, but instead of going down the straight horror 'gorenography' route, which would suffice for a low budget movie, the makers have decided to be clever and do something a little different. sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, and this is a prime example of the latter. When you start to question a movie, and find yourself saying 'I would have settled for a below par I Know What You Did Last Summer', which this sets itself up to be, you know you are losing interest rapidly. What we get is a twist on the myth, the original story is wrong, and we get a sort of weird Woman In Black revenge film. Which bored me senseless, mate.

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• Senseless Mess

  claudio_carvalho2016-03-12

  The American Maya (Jessica Tovey), Amelia (Pippa Black) and her brother Toby (Tim Pocock) are spending vacation in Australia. The meet the locals Geordie (Tim Phillipps) and Oscar (Andrew Ryan) on the beach and Oscar tells a ghost story at the campfire. He tells that a ghost of a motorcyclist appears at the Lemon Tree Passage intersection when a car with teenagers speeds up at the spot. They decide to go to the location to see the ghost with tragic consequences. "Lemon Tree Passage" is a horror movie with a story that is a senseless mess. It is impossible to understand the plot that begins with the ghost of a married motorcyclist and ends with the fiend of a raped girl that was murdered. Is Sam the older brother of Geordie? Why the evil ghost seeks revenge against the teenagers and not only against Sam? Why Maya is connected and possessed by the evil spirit? There are so many questions to be made that better off not waste time watching this flick. My vote is two. Title (Brazil): "A Lenda Negra" ("The Black Legend")

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• A truly random haunting

  quincytheodore2015-11-15

  Lemon Tree Passage looks like a movie made from three different rejected screenplays. It's utterly inconsistent, shifting its tone multiple times and using cliché base premise that doesn't pan out in any way. It even has stupid teenagers cast who mock how ridiculous campfire story is, and then the movie proceeds on doing that exact same ridiculous cliché. This is the same old story about a group of teenager who try an urban legend. The characters are identical to almost every other horror movies, the main lead brunette who has visions all the time, the possible love interest cool guy, the blondie and the comic relief. They behave in a very predictable way, this might just be a copy of bloopers from 80s horror movie. After a while the logic crumbles as both the characters and even the haunting act in such arbitrary manner. Splitting up in crisis is foolish, but these people split up off-screen without any reasons. The supposed entity even haunts sporadically, it jumps from scene to scene as urban legend, possession and whatever horror gimmick the mood takes it. The movie is a consecutive series of random occurrences which lose any sense of continuity or even structure after thirty minutes, which is already thirty minutes of your life that could've been saved.

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• Lemon Tree Passage

  a_baron2015-05-29

  American youngsters travelling the world, possibly on their a gap year, meet up with locals Down Under, a bit of romance, maybe, and a ghost tale? Drive down a certain road late at night, and you will see a mysterious light behind you. For real? Yup. Whacko, let's do it again! Not a good idea. In fact not a good anything, because that is as good as it gets. Sure, there is horror herein, a body appears and disappears, one of the girls sees a ghost neither of her companions can see, and is lured into a lake. After apparently spending minutes underwater she is brought to the surface conscious but none the worse for it, although maybe possessed by the spirit of a murder victim, which appears to be the reason they are out here in the woods. The trouble is the whole thing is so confusing; there is even terrestrial menace afoot, but what is the viewer to make of it? Added to this, most of the action takes place in the dark, which is where you will probably end up if you sit right through this one.

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• Not completely irredeemable

  Blazehgehg2015-01-19

  The primary failing of this movie is a lack of communication. There's a lot of great atmosphere and sound design -- I found myself legitimately creeped out by a couple of scenes. The problem is the movie is too in love with its own mystery, to the point where up until the last ten minutes, you're not quite sure what's going on. There's no identifiable villain, no motive, just a bunch of seemingly unrelated events mixed with hallucinations, flashbacks, and generic jump scares. You can't ever quite be sure what's really happening. In some movies that's a benefit, but Lemon Tree Passage really could've thrown the viewer a bone earlier in the movie. Without it, a lot of this feels like nonsense. Occasionally spooky nonsense, mind you, but still nonsense. It gets boring when you aren't provided a reason as to why anything is happening. The answer to the movie's great mystery has almost zero payoff, too. It hardly even feels like an answer, and is more of an excuse to have a somewhat non-sequiturial slasher flick. It did make for marginally fun riffing with friends, but even then, it was largely just a lot of exclamations of "WHAT IS EVEN HAPPENING?"

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