Stream It Or Skip It: ‘The Birch’ On Facebook Watch, Where Three Teens Are Linked By A Murderous Tree-Like Being

Facebook Watch has been one of the more experimental streaming outlets in the past couple of years. They’ve tried short-form dramedies like Sorry For Your Loss, full-fledged comedy camp like Queen America, teen drama like Five Points, and animated shows like Human Discoveries. So horror seems to be another place to go, with the uniquely-structured series The Birch. Read for more…

THE BIRCH: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: A purple-haired teenage girl walks in the woods, trips and falls face-first into a dirty puddle.

The Gist: Evie Grayson (Xaria Dotson), is one of those teens who will likely have a fulfilling and creative adult life, but for right now, she’s a high school loner. She’s probably best known as the kid whose mother, a registered nurse, died of a drug overdose the previous year. Evie and her father are still reeling from the death, with Evie always attempting to talk to her mom from beyond the grave using ritualistic incantations.

She sees the local drug dealers, led by Thurston Polk (Dempsey Bryk), who chase her away. But while she’s back in the woods, trying to talk to her mother at her grave, she stumbles upon Thurston and his buddies Wes (Alexander Neher) and Ryan (Giullian Yao Gioiello) looking over a dead junkie, saying things like “you killed him.” They hear Evie’s phone, chase her and threaten her. As Evie is stumbling out of the woods, she hears a noise, sees a black flower grow at her feet and then finds twigs fashioned into a symbol on the ground. She looks up the symbol’s significance, and when she gets harassed by the boys at school the next day, she goes back to the woods seeking help from The Birch.

In episode 2, we see Lanie Bouchard (Midori Francis) give birth to a daughter, only to have it immediately taken away from her, to be raised by her prominent parents as her sister, in order to avoid embarrassment. As she goes back to her prep school, she finds that she has some ability to make branches fly off trees, especially when she goes into seizures when provoked. Back home, she sneaks into her daughter’s room after a few weeks of being kept from her, and immediately bonds. When her parents try to take the baby away from her, her anger conjures up enough power for her to break her daughter’s crib.

In episode 3, we see the events of episode 1 from Thurston’s perspective, and why he’s dealing; he and his little brother are looking to move away from their abusive, drug lord uncle and move to California. But The Birch may get in the way of those plans.

Our Take: The Birch is based on a short of the same name that was produced for Jack Davis’ Crypt TV. Davis is an EP of this series along with Kate Krantz and Darren Brandl. The reason why we watched the first three episodes is that the episodes are in the 12-17 minute range, and with the first three episodes being dropped by Facebook Watch on October 11, we figured it would be a good idea to see the introductions to each of the teens that will be the series’ main characters.

And, while the show is well-acted and has a fun low-budget horror feel to it, we’re not sure where exactly it’s going. If this were a traditional 45-minute pilot, the first three episodes would have been intercut with each other to show the stories of Evie, Lanie and Thurston. And, as we imagined how that might have played out, we still didn’t 100% get what the outcome will be.

One of the problems is that, while Evie and Thurston’s stories are inextricably linked, Lanie’s story is wholly separate, at least at the beginning. Is Lanie the Birch? We know the Birch is a woman that looks like a tree, who can magically extend her roots and branches out to attack and kill her prey. After the first three episodes, the only thing we can think of is that, considering Lanie possesses similar powers to The Birch, that she’s either The Birch herself or somehow related to her.

But we really don’t know. And while we like how writers J. Casey Modderno, Dylan Mulick and David Aslan are able to pack as much story as they do in these short segments, until the last few minutes of episode 3, there wasn’t a ton of plot movement. And even after that episode, we’re still not sure where things are going. Invoking The Birch is supposed to cost the person looking for her help almost as much as the people The Birch attack, but it feels like it’ll take a lot of clicks on Facebook to get us there.

Sex and Skin: Nothing so far.

Parting Shot: At the end of episode 3, Ryan gets a visit from The Birch. And let’s just say it doesn’t go well for Ryan.

Sleeper Star: Even though she’s one of the stars of the series, we think Xaria Dotson stands out as Evie, who seems to have the most backstory, the most emotional ups and downs, and the most personality.

Most Pilot-y Line: Why does every time some sort of supernatural being makes its presence known somewhere, a TV or computer screen goes on the fritz in a way that a screen would never go on the fritz? Snow, green lines, all sorts of audio oddities. We guess it’s because it’s supernatural, but it’s also a crutch.

Our Call: SKIP IT. While The Birch isn’t terrible, it moves far too slow to keep you aimlessly clicking on episodes while you’re scrolling through Facebook.

Your Call:

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, VanityFair.com, Playboy.com, Fast Company.com, RollingStone.com, Billboard and elsewhere.

Stream The Birch On Facebook Watch