Boys in the Trees

A town in Australia on Halloween night, 1997. Corey is at the end of his last year at school; he belongs to a group of skaters and follows their leader Jango. That night he runs into Jonah, a friend from childhood whom the group later targeted, with Corey joining in. Jonah asks him for something: to walk him home. Along the way they tell each other stories, and what they tell begins to become real. Nicholas Verso writes and directs. The narrative takes place over one night and the line between the real and the imagined keeps sliding; the horror stories they tell become visible in the streets of the town. The subject is bullying and complicity. Corey never harmed Jonah directly; he stayed silent and took that side. The narrative asks what that costs. Australian suburban culture of the nineties is given in detail: skating, music, clothes and the closedness of the town. The visual language is dark and the fantastical elements are built with practical effects; the budget is small and that is deliberately left visible. The ending is left unclear and how much of it was real is not said. Who it is for: viewers who like Australian independent cinema and youth narratives with fantastical elements. Who it is not for: the pacing is irregular, the metaphor is too plain, and the ending raises the emotional pressure.