Horror cliches ruin ‘The Forest’
Print Edition
THE January movie has long had a reputation for being among the worst that Hollywood has to offer, as though everyone collectively acknowledges that they need a month to catch up on the glut of prestige offerings and awards hopefuls that hit at the end of December.
There are always exceptions of course, but unfortunately “The Forest,” a rotten horror film about twin sisters and the spooky Japanese woods where people go to kill themselves, is not one of them.
It’s rife with unbearable dialogue, cheap jump scares, and far too familiar imagery which makes the whole experience instantly forgettable.
The story starts when Sara (Natalie Dormer), a young, wealthy professional living with a blandly handsome husband (Eoin Macken), discovers that her expat twin sister has disappeared in a forest in Japan. This isn’t any forest, though. It’s Aokigahara, also known as the suicide forest. Everyone she talks to assures her that her sister is definitely dead by now.
But Sara knows better. In “The Forest” being a twin means that you have a spidey sense that your other half is around and living. There’s a buzz, or something, and one time when Jess (also played by Dormer) took too many pills, the hum stopped. That’s Sara knew something was wrong and knew to call the police to check on her.
So Sara hops on a plane to Japan to search for Jess in the spooky suicide forest. Her dreams and eventually visions get creepier the closer she gets.
One night at the bar, she meets a handsome American travel writer from Australia, Aiden (Taylor Kinney) who offers to let her accompany him and a park ranger, Michi (Yukiyoshi Ozawa) into the forest. Michi does “off the books” treks through the woods to try to save people from killing themselves. And, of course, there things go crazy, especially after Sara decides to stay overnight.
Director Jason Zada in his feature debut shows some stylistic flair, but resorts to far too many scary movie cliche to make this a fun watch, including the requisite score laced with creepy little girls singing off in the distance.
Dormer, who is such a standout as the feisty Margaery Tyrell on “Game of Thrones,” manages to infuse a few moments with humor and zest, but Sara never really comes to life as a full character. It’s hard to tell whether that’s a problem with the writing or the performance. Kinney’s Aiden is similarly unremarkable.
Save yourself from “The Forest”. It’s pretty bad, even for a January release.
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