When Trees Attack (Sort Of)
Zombie movies usually start with something bold—a strange chemical spill, a cursed artifact, maybe even a voodoo ritual. Severed (2005), a Canadian export nobody asked for, takes a different approach: it blames forestry management. Yes, this is the first zombie movie where the apocalypse is caused by eco-unfriendly tree sap. Forget Romero’s biting social commentary or O’Bannon’s punk rock anarchy—here the horror comes from a genetically altered fir tree dripping goop like expired pancake syrup.
It’s the cinematic equivalent of being eaten alive by your recycling bin.
Eco-Horror, But Make It Sleepy
The film is set on a remote logging island, where loggers butt heads with environmental protesters. Tensions escalate when one of the loggers spikes a tree, the sap infects a chainsaw wound, and voilà: zombie lumberjack. That’s right—the virus doesn’t come from a secret military experiment or a government conspiracy. It comes from… trees that grow too fast. Somewhere in a boardroom, a producer must have thought, “What if FernGully had more chainsaws and less fun?”
The problem is, eco-horror can work. Just ask The Ruins or The Happening (well, maybe don’t ask The Happening). But Severed is too dull to be scary, too self-serious to be campy, and too predictable to be surprising.
The Cast: Whittled From Wood
Paul Campbell plays Tyler, the rich-boy son of the logging company president. He’s shipped off to the island to “learn the business” and promptly discovers the business of getting everyone killed. Campbell does his best, but Tyler’s defining character trait is “generic white guy in a flannel shirt.” He looks less like a savior of humanity and more like someone who should be asking if you’d like fries with that.
Sarah Lind plays Rita, the eco-activist love interest. She’s supposed to be fierce and principled, but mostly she scowls, shouts, and eventually hooks up with Tyler in a scene so devoid of chemistry it makes tax season look erotic. Their romance has all the heat of a wet matchbook.
Julian Christopher as Mac fares better. As the logging crew boss, he at least feels like he belongs in the woods. Unfortunately, he’s stuck with dialogue like, “The trees… they’ve turned on us.” Watching him try to sell that line is like watching Shakespeare performed at a high school pep rally.
And then there’s JR Bourne as Carter, the chemist whose “growth experiment” caused the mess. He spends the movie apologizing for his role, getting bullied by other survivors, and ultimately walking off into the woods with an axe like he’s auditioning for Les Misérables: The Zombie Years.
The Zombies: Maple-Flavored Mediocrity
The infected loggers stumble around in predictable fashion, growling, moaning, and occasionally chomping on people. But there’s nothing distinctive about them. No clever kills, no shocking transformations—just people with pale makeup and ketchup smeared on their mouths. They’re not even scary in a claustrophobic “we’re trapped in the woods” way. They’re just… there.
The most interesting zombie moment is when Mac has to kill his beloved apprentice Luke, who’s turned into a flesh-eating tree-hugger. But even that emotional beat fizzles out, because the movie spends so much time trudging between bunkers and trucks that we’ve forgotten who Luke was by the time he dies.
The Pacing: Death by Boredom
At nearly 90 minutes, Severed still feels like it lasts longer than a Canadian winter. The survivors shuffle from one camp to another, bicker about who caused the outbreak, and occasionally stop to deliver exposition so wooden it should be recycled. Entire subplots—like the company boardroom arguing about whether to rescue Tyler—exist only to pad the runtime. Spoiler: they don’t rescue him, and we don’t care.
The only burst of energy comes when a rogue group of surviving loggers shows up, living like militaristic psychos in a Mad Max cosplay camp. They force newcomers to play “zombie pen,” where captives are made to kill caged zombies for sport. This should be horrifying. Instead, it looks like a bad reality TV pilot: Canada’s Next Top Logger Gladiator.
The Love Story Nobody Wanted
Somewhere in the middle of the carnage, Tyler and Rita decide to hook up. Because nothing says “romantic spark” like watching your friends get their faces gnawed off by mutant lumberjacks. Their scene is awkward, rushed, and completely unearned. It’s like the filmmakers realized they’d forgotten to add a sex subplot and threw one in between beheadings.
The result? The least believable love story in zombie cinema—and that includes the couple in Warm Bodies.
The Ending: Clear-Cut Disappointment
By the finale, the survivors have dwindled to Tyler, Rita, and Mac. Then Mac gets bitten, Rita confesses she spiked the tree that started it all (oops), and Mac forgives her as he dies. Tyler tries to save Carter, who promptly gets swarmed, and finally, Rita staggers off alone into the wilderness.
Meanwhile, Tyler’s corporate dad sits in his mansion, staring at a family photo with moist eyes like the villain in a shampoo commercial. It’s supposed to be tragic irony: his greed cost him his son. Instead, it plays like a deleted scene from Succession with zombies awkwardly Photoshopped in.
The Message: Logging Is Bad, Zombies Are Worse
Severed clearly wants to be more than a zombie flick. It wants to be a cautionary tale about corporate greed, genetic tampering, and the exploitation of nature. But the heavy-handed delivery turns it into a PSA with bite marks. Characters repeatedly stop the action to announce things like, “This is what happens when we play God!” Yes, thank you, Captain Obvious—we got it when the chainsaw sap turned Bob into a face-muncher.
The Production: Cheap Chainsaws, Cheaper Gore
Shot in British Columbia, the movie at least benefits from some moody forests. But that’s where the praise ends. The gore effects are weak, the zombie makeup looks like it was applied with a glue stick, and the editing is so flat that even headshots land with all the impact of a snowball. For a movie about chainsaws, there’s a shocking lack of actual chainsaw mayhem.
If you can’t deliver fun gore in a zombie-logger movie, what’s the point?
Final Judgment: A Deadly Dull Logging Shift
Severed: Forest of the Dead could have been a cult classic. Zombies and loggers? Eco-terrorists versus corporations? That’s fertile ground for satire and gore. Instead, it’s a slog through the woods, full of half-baked social commentary, uninspired zombies, and characters with less depth than a puddle of tree sap.
It takes a premise that could have been gloriously absurd and instead treats it with self-serious dread. The result? A movie that’s neither scary, nor funny, nor entertaining—just severely disappointing.
