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"It's in the trees! It's coming":

Whenever something overtly supernatural occurs in Curse of the Demon, there are usually trees in the shot. The film's most famous line, "It's in the trees! It's coming," is testament to the thematic role of trees in the movie. This is another subtle demonizing of Britain's pre-Christian past: the movie has already associated British druidic traditions with devil worship, so it's only a small step to appropriate the nature worship of druidism for diabolical purposes.

Here, holden is placed against a background of swirling leaves as Karswell conjures up a wind storm.

Compare with Karswell in the same scene. He seems at home in this setting. He's in his element, a fact heightened by the clown's face he wears in this sequence.

Trees become overtly menacing at the end of this scene, when lightning sends branches crashing to the ground around Holden:

Later in the movie, Holden is chased by...something...while walking through the woods. The audience, of course, knows that this is the demon attempting to pierce the veil between its reality and our own. We've already seen the demon at the film's beginning. Holden is privy to no such knowledge, but even so, this encounter is where his reason begins to crack:

Metaphorically speaking, Holden is walking through the very darkest part of the forest in these scenes, like a character in a fairy tale.