The Forest (2016)

The Forest (2016) Not much to say about this film.

A sort of 2016 American supernatural horror film directed by Jason Zada (his feature debut) and written by Ben Ketai, Nick Antosca and Sarah Cornwell. The film stars the excellent Natalie Dormer (who plays the twin sisters), Taylor Kinney, Yukiyoshi Ozawa and Eoin Macken. A fairly decent psychological thriller, too.

Dormer is always excellent. The more I see of her, the more I love her.
But her films rarely live up to her talent, unfortunately. And this one is no exception.

More disturbing than frightening, but with a few good, suspenseful moments. There are certainly a good number of jumpscares, but most of them are absolutely expected, and the script doesn’t really go for originality or unpredictability.

The film doesn’t waste any time and immediately takes us to Japan. There’s not too much downtime, the landscapes are varied and there’s a good alternation between day and night, which is quite rare in this kind of film.

Most of the story takes place in Aokigahara, a forest north-west of Mount Fuji in Japan, known as a popular destination for people who want to commit suicide. This location is only a small part of the whole of Mount Fuji.

Yes, absolutely: In Japan, if you’re fed up with your life and want to put an end to it, there’s the perfect place to do it: this forest! Even Gus Van Sant tried to end his filmmaking days there with his ‘Nos Souvenirs/The Sea of Trees (2015)’, that’s how famous he is!

A terrifying forest that makes you hallucinate? Yes, of course it makes you think of The Blair Witch Project (1999) and its sequels Blair Witch 2 (2000) and… Blair Witch, released the same year (2016) as this film! Crazy!!!

Sara’s hallucinations in the Forest are caused by yūrei, spirits of the ‘ruined’ who haunt Aokigahara Forest due to its high suicide rate. Sara’s accidental suicide in the Forest was the result of her traumatic past and the negative thoughts that attracted the yūrei.

As usual, when US horror cinema runs out of inspiration, it relocates, and what better place to get acquainted with new spirits than Asian countries and their ancestral legends! But the basic idea of The Forest is original, a change from the killer who stalks his prey in the woods.

There are times when I watch two or three horror films every week, and this was one of the ones I disliked the least!

The last scene is interesting, leaving us with a poetic and meaningful ending. But the last few seconds are ridiculous, with a habitual jump scare that’s pretty pointless and relatively poorly done. It’s the only moment when the special effects and make-up are really bad.

In the end, neither good nor bad, ‘The Forest’ adds to the pile of horror films that generally go unnoticed and are as quickly seen as they are forgotten.

The music in the closing credits is powerful and haunting, with lots of children’s voices singing like a cult choir.