The Forest

The Forest is certainly not the worst horror movie I've seen recently. In fact, first-time feature director, Jason Zada, gets off some nice shots, and has a sense of atmosphere.  Even the cast, while not exactly a standout, does its job well enough.  What holds the film back is basically the script.  It never engages us like it should, and the scares stick too close to similar films that have come before it.  What this movie needed to push it over the top was a jolt of inspiration or originality.

The plot centers on twin sisters, Sara and Jess Price, who are both played by Natalie Dormer from TV's Game of Thrones.  They both came from a tragic upbringing, with their parents being killed in an accident when they were young.  As adults, Sara has grown up to be well-adjusted with a good life and a devoted boyfriend (Eoin Macken), while Jess is the more troubled of the two, unable to turn her life around.  Things seemed to be looking up for Jess when she took a teaching job over in Tokyo, but one night, Sara receives a troubling phone call from Japan that her sister has mysteriously disappeared while her class was visiting the mysterious Aokigahara Forest.  Resting at the foot of Mount Fuji, Aokigahara has gained a ghostly reputation, as apparently it's a popular place for people to commit suicide.  Many believe that it is haunted by the tortured souls who entered in order to take their own lives.  But Sara has a sense that her sister is still alive somehow, and flies out to Japan in order to look for her.

After some fruitless searching, she happens upon an American journalist named Aiden (Taylor Kinney), who writes about Japan for an Australian travel magazine.  He not only knows about the forest, but is good friends with a ranger (Yukiyoshi Ozawa) who makes routine trips there to look for the bodies of poor souls that went in there to end their lives.  He offers to take Sara into the forest to look for some answers.  Our heroes are warned early on not to go off the trail when they are on the forest, and not to always believe what they see, as your mind can play tricks on you within the forest.  Naturally, Sara breaks these rules as quickly as possible, and soon finds herself fleeing through dark paths, underground caves, and abandoned cabins.  She is haunted by visions of dead Japanese school girls and other apparitions, and soon comes to the realization that maybe she can't even trust the people she entered the forest with, who may or may not have ulterior motives for accompanying her.

It's a shame that The Forest goes so conventional with its scares.  If it had played up the psychological and paranoia angle that Sara goes through during the film, about not knowing what's real or if she can trust the people who are supposed to be guiding and protecting her, this really could have been terrifying.  There are hints at this angle here and there, but whenever the movie seems to be getting close to being interesting, it throws in another "boo" moment, where a dead-eyed ghoul suddenly bum rushes the camera to give the audience a quick jolt.  Most of these moments are easily telegraphed, and in a lot of cases, it turns out not to be a threat at all.  This is one of those movies where people like to suddenly pop up in front of our heroine, or slam on the window she's looking out of for absolutely no reason.

The Japanese setting also feels underused here.  While I appreciated that the film uses genuine Japanese actors (some of whom will be recognizable to those who frequent Asian cinema), there's very little in the way of scenes depicting Sara feeling like a stranger in a land she never understands.  Most of the scenes outside of the forest are devoted to Sara walking around, while various Japanese extras eye her ominously or suspiciously like they distrust her somehow.  This isn't really elaborated on much.  It's just there to create some false tension.  So yeah, this is a deeply flawed movie that never lives up to its full potential.  And yet, I must admit, I was never bored.  It moves along at a good pace, and there are a few moments that seem to be building to some tension.  Sure, the payoff is disappointing, but up until that happened, I was with the movie. 

Considering that The Forest is the first wide release of the year and being pushed into theaters right at the start of January, I was expecting much worse.  The movie cannot be called a success, but it does a few small things right, and I kind of had fun from time to time.  It's not anything you need to rush out and see, but it's also not a total time-waster.

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