Tribeca Review: “A Tree Fell in the Woods”

A Tree Fell in the Woods (Nora Kirkpatrick, 2025) 3 out of 5 stars

There’s a lot of fraught and frantic activity in A Tree Fell in the Woods, writer/director Nora Kirkpatrick’s feature debut. Some of it proves comically effective, while other parts come across as merely hyperactive. When the magic works and the ensemble comes together, it’s an entertaining romp about relationships and cheating; when neither go quite according to plan, it drags. The good news is that the former quality slightly triumphs over the latter.

It’s the time between Christmas and New Year’s, and two couples—Melanie (Ashley Park, Netflix’s Emily in Paris) and Mitch (Josh Gad, Frozen), and Debs (Alexandra Daddario, We Summon the Darkness) and Josh (Daveed Diggs, Hamilton)—are gathering, as it seems they frequently do, to celebrate the holidays. Debs and Mitch’s friendship goes back to college, and they have an easy rapport born of long shared experience. Their spouses seem nice enough, though an initial gift exchange reveals some tension in at least one of the marriages.

The first morning, Debs and Mitch head off on a hike together, leaving Josh and Melanie asleep in their respective beds. We learn a little of the besties’ history through light banter as they climb the snow-filled mountain above. Beholding a deer in the woods (something unusual only to city folks), they stand and marvel, almost failing to notice the tree beginning to fall. Fortunately, they avoid injury and head back down.

Unfortunately, approaching the rented cabin, they spy Josh and Melanie getting it on. Horrified, they each want to take a different approach: Debs seeks direct and instant confrontation while Mitch, who feels like he “won the lottery” with Melanie, would rather pretend that nothing happened. Fate will soon intervene, however, taking the decision out of their hands and upending the vacation.

That’s the initial setup, with a snowstorm on the way to keep everyone from leaving. With the occasional addition of Kevin Pollak (Here’s Yianni!), as Gary, the rental property’s owner, it’s just four actors in a single location, running the full gamut of their emotions. The dialogue and action range from sad and contemplative to giddy and wild. Throw in some magic moonshine, too, for additional frantic energy.

The result is an uneven, if nevertheless often engaging, meditation on love and its loss. Comedy and drama mix well at times, less so at others. There are both too many endings and somehow no satisfying resolution. Still, the above caveats notwithstanding, there are sufficient laughs and genuine tears to make of A Tree Fell in the Woods a farce that succeeds more than it doesn’t.

Christopher Llewellyn Reed

Christopher Llewellyn Reed is a film critic, filmmaker, and educator, as well as Film Festival Today's Editor. A member of both the Online Film Critics Society (OFCS) and the Washington DC Area Film Critics Association (WAFCA), and a Rotten Tomatoes-approved film critic, Chris is, in addition, lead film critic at Hammer to Nail and the author of Film Editing: Theory and Practice.