And, again, all fellow reviewers are free to tear this one apart, as usual.

Why am I finally doing this to you? For one, I’m working on a mega-review that is killing me every time I try to work on it. Also, I recently met a nice guy that just finished shooting an actual feature, which you can find information on and a trailer here (support indie filmmaking!): The Wayside. And he sent me a very nice email extolling the merits of Vending Machine and the travesty…I mean cinematic milestone we’re about to dissect. So, it got me to go back and watch all those things and decided it was time to complete the cycle.

PLEASE WATCH THE SHORT AT THE BOTTOM OF THE PAGE BEFORE READING FURTHER. I’ll wait for you, here.

Ok. Are you ready?

As usual, we’ll start with me giving it the Nix treatment.

“Ok, there’s that guy from Vending Machine and he’s opening presents. Oh. That’s just the opening title shot. Where the fuck did that apostrophe come from? The seasons are eating? Does that make any sense?

Anyway, the guy apparently, has a conniption fit because…I guess he doesn’t really want to decorate for Masmas? I dunno, he just freaks out and speaks in tongues. He goes ahead and helps decorate the tree to make his girl happy, and, miraculously, it works. How fucking cute.

But wait! Trouble is brewing! When the lights are plugged in, she realizes what a haphazard job he did by just throwing them randomly on the tree, while she was so meticulous about it. Boy, is she pissed. As a matter of fact, she’s so pissed that she takes a ridiculously well-marked box of “My Stuff” and leaves him.

Of course, this being a guy, he has no idea what in the hell he did wrong, so he takes out his aggressions on the tree. Makes total sense.

Ya know, for being such a stupid idea for a movie, this actually might ring true for a lot of guys, out there.

Scratch that. He just busted out a chainsaw on the tree. Now that’s pretty out there, dude.

WTF? Now the tree is attacking HIM?! What is it doing? Rubbing him to death? Oh, wait, he seems to be in pain and….oh. Ok. It ate him. The fucking Masmas tree just ate that guy.

When did this movie turn into the Twilight Zone? I thought this was an examination of male habits and emotional responses and then a fucking tree eats the guy? Jeezuz.

And the movie lets us know that the tree is very pleased with its consumption of the guy, as portrayed by a shitty animated smiley-face. Thanks, movie.

Wait a fucking minute. That Vending Machine guy is back and still alive? Oh, ha ha, movie. You tricked me. This is just the ending credits. Ya really got me there. Oh, and nice framing of “Starring” so that it looks like “Starrin”. Very professional.

The positives:
Well, the music was perfect. Would have been nice if you could have credited the musician in the actual film, asshole.

The director tried some interesting things with angles and lighting. I like how the kiss has a huge shadow directly behind of what’s happening right in front of us and that the same idea was used when the guy attacked the tree with the chainsaw. Interesting. I don’t know what it’s supposed to mean, but it’s interesting, nonetheless.

Also, having the character appear from behind that pole, or whatever it was, was a nice touch. A different way of having a character enter the frame.

One last positive: Even though I could tell that this was cut by hand and taped together, the freak-out scene with the guy jumping all over the screen was visually exciting. (Also liked the subliminal you threw in there.)

The negatives:
Some of the framing, as mentioned above, is just damn amateurish. Did you not have a tri-pod?

I also have to say that some of the initial editing is pretty choppy with lots of jump-cuts, but once we get past the introduction of the characters and situation, it smoothes out.

But what in the hell is all of this shit supposed to MEAN? Are these two characters druids that have to appease the tree properly and he fucked it up? Was it just pointing out that women are fastidious and men just want to get it done? If that’s the case, then where did the fucking killer tree come from, dude? Fuck!

All in all, it’s entertaining but confusing. Good job, I guess.

So, there it is. What I would assume someone watching this would think as they viewed it.

There are many interesting stories behind the making of this film. I won’t bombard you with all of them, but I will give you some tidbits.

First, I plotted, planned, story-boarded and created the whole idea to a copyrighted song (which will go unnamed, because Spawn aka: Brainshift deserves all the credit for making this work as well as it does. Thanks, Spawn!) My jumping off idea was: “killer Christmas tree“. That’s it. From there I worked out the rest.

I shot it in under 24 hours over a 2 day period. My first day, I had a crew of 4. Myself, my girlfriend, and my two actors. Most of that was spent shooting scenes with the two characters interacting and their individual shots. Day 2 was just me and Lucas shooting what comprises the majority of the film.

We melted the carpet with our lighting gear, a light exploded, we broke the goddamn tree (It was so broken that as it‘s eating Lucas, he could only get the top part to shake, so I had to hold the camera, get the shot and shake the bottom part of the stupid tree), the tri-pod broke half-way through the night. It was hell. But, dammit! We got it done.

Yes, I shot on Super-8, again. And it’s not cheap. I must have spent around $400 on film and processing. Good thing the majority of the footage got left on the cutting-room floor, isn’t it? But that’s the thing about film. No matter how long or hard you’ve worked on getting it ready to shoot, when it comes down to it, some things just don’t work or don’t need to be there. I shot almost a whole reel (about 3 minutes of film) on just that girl and where is that? Probably in a garbage dump, somewhere. The film is better without those scenes.

Ok, enough. IS THERE A POINT TO THIS FILM? Is there some kind of meaning? Or is it just guy gets pissed, takes it out on tree, tree gets pissed and eats guy?

Unfortunately, yes. There actually is a point.

I didn’t tell you, the readers of the site, what the meaning of Vending Machine was, but I will let you in on this one. However, please just continue to enjoy the short for what it is: a fun little trippy film with a crazy guy who gets eaten by a Masmas tree, ok? The underlying meaning is NOT the real point of the film, it just happens to be there. The point is to have fun.

It’s about abuse in relationships. All that Masmas bullshit means nothing. The tree represents the significant other and it finally has had enough and takes action. I’m not saying people in abusive relationships should eat the person hurting them (although, that would make a fucking cool movie), I’m just saying that if you treat someone like shit, long enough, eventually something will break. They leave. Cops. Jail. A bullet to the head. I dunno. Whatever.