A Guide to Becoming an Elm Tree (CFF) is Soft, Sad, and Slow

Title: A Guide to Becoming an Elm Tree

First Non-Festival Release: TBD

Director: Adam Mann, Skye Mann

Writer: Adam Mann, Skye Mann

Runtime: 75 Minutes

Starring: James Healy-Meaney, Gerry Wade, M.J. Sullivan

Where to Watch: Check out where to find it here

This film’s review was written after its screening at the Chattanooga Film Festival in 2024.

Grief can make people do incredible things. This motivation can be borne of any intentions and manifest through many actions but has the potential to forever change the bereaved.

This is especially true of Padraig (James Healy-Meaney), a man who is determined to make a casket for his late wife, Aiobheann (Jordon-Dion Scanlon) by hand. He enlists the help of local craftsman, Liam (MJ Sullivan), for the project. Through their prolonged woodworking sessions, Padraig learns about the manual skills of carpentry, general life lessons from Liam, and the dangers of stoking the dead while they rest.

Moody, bleak, and altogether tragic, A Guide to Becoming an Elm Tree is a well-made, if uneventful, indie effort.

A Guide to Becoming an Elm Tree is a simple folk horror film that aims to get under the skin with the implications of its premise. Padraig’s drive to prove he can do difficult things on behalf of his late wife obscures his own truth from himself: his motivator lies in his selfish need to satiate his grief through any means necessary. This twisted desire catapults him to new depths as he learns from the various books in Liam’s shop about the power of the elm tree. To the village, elm trees are a gift from the gods, but through Padraig’s ignorance one becomes a torturous curse for Aiobheann.

Much of the weight falls on James Healy-Meaney and MJ Sullivan to handle the film’s more grounded elements. With just two characters occupying much of its runtime, A Guide to Becoming an Elm Tree bets on the pair’s chemistry to make its story work. For the most part this bet pays off, as Healy-Meaney and Sullivan work well together. Healy-Meaney brings a determined, brash, and brooding force to the film while Sullivan embodies Liam as a distant paternal foil, often flowing between castigating and caring. Their back-and-forth maintains an element of escalating tension within the story as its more supernatural elements begin oozing through in the finale. While it doesn’t crescendo to soaring heights, it is compelling enough to complement the film’s take on the folktale.

Shot in black and white, there is a haunting simplicity to the horror that lurks beneath the indie film’s dialogue heavy story. Much of the action in A Guide to Becoming an Elm Tree is captured in stillness. The movement of the camera feels as deliberate as the slow-burn build of the casket. Its striking black and white aesthetic doesn’t just serve as a beautiful [lack of] color pallet. Acting as a visual reminder of the loss of color and life from Padraig’s life, the choice shows a deep understanding for the story that Skye Mann and Adam Mann want to tell.

While A Guide to Becoming an Elm Tree is a technically sound film, it does sag with its stagnant pacing. Its first act lays the foundation for the story’s examination on grief and greed while establishing its major players. Then, the icy grit of the two men breaks down through their interactions through its second act. Once it reaches its third act and climax, it seems like A Guide to Becoming an Elm Tree doesn’t quite know how to stick the landing. Sure, Padraig is now left to grapple with the enormity of his actions and make a decision that will kill a part of him either way, but the momentum of the film dies with this revelation. It’s a compelling idea but feels shortchanged by the abrupt ending.

A slow-paced, familiar tale of loss, A Guide to Becoming an Elm Tree combines its Irish folktale with a universal premise for mixed results. Featuring a straightforward story and an unsettling approach to scares, the indie does a good job of maintaining its mystery while not setting the world on fire with its revelations. Solid technical components like its beautiful black and white cinematography and crisp sound design boost the film’s folktale aesthetic without distracting from the story. It won’t be for everyone but A Guide to Becoming an Elm Tree is a solid little haunter that reminds viewers how precious both life and death are.

Overall Score? 6/10