The Forest is pretty standard horror movie fare. It involves an American protagonist going to a distant land, and paying a price for generally writing off the various warnings of the locals as silly superstition. It is a pretty worn out setup, but it can be fun if executed well enough. Unfortunately, The Forest does not stick the landing. The movie is kind of nice to look at, but it isn’t very scary. And it really struggles to find any momentum as it gets lost in a supernatural wilderness of its own making.
Sara (Natalie Dormer) has received word that her twin sister Jess (also Dormer) has gone missing, and was last seen around Aokigahara forest in Japan. Aokigahara forest is known for being a place where people go to commit suicide. Sara is told repeatedly that there is little chance that Jess is alive, but she has a feeling that her twin is still somewhere in the forest. She gets some help from journalist Aiden (Taylor Kinney), who hooks her up with a local guide. They manage to find Jess’ tent, but not Jess. Sara is advised to leave the forest before it gets dark, but she insists on staying. And soon enough, she begins to see strange things that push her to the brink.
The film’s best feature is its setting. Though not actually shot in Aokigahara, the film does manage to gain some eerie atmosphere from the wilderness setting. There are moments where the film actually shows off some technical flair, landing on unique, compelling images that take advantage of the general sense that these characters are as far away from human civilization as possible. These woods are not friendly, and to the film’s credit, it makes it feel that way.
But the film can’t leverage this setting for actual scares. Though the ingredients are all there, the movie is unable to provide a growing sense of danger for its characters. It stays at a steady level, the tension hardly ever rising. To make things worse, the plot hardly ever moves either. Once the two main characters are lost in the woods, hardly anything really happens. They don’t get closer to figuring out what happened to Jess. They don’t figure out what they can do to survive this forest. They don’t even really come to understand what exactly is happening.
And through all this, the characters never really rise to a level worthy of any attention. There isn’t really a whole lot to Sara. Her earliest scenes establish that she feels kind of lost in Japan, but the film doesn’t turn that into anything. The backstory that’s slowly revealed doesn’t really say much more about who she is. A strong, well-defined lead could have given this movie some appeal in spite of the lack of scares, but the film doesn’t have that either. Natalie Dormer is a little too fierce to make her character’s distress work on screen. The actress offers a lot of personality, but it isn’t quite enough to make up for the weaknesses of the writing.
The Forest is just rough all around. It has a main character that’s difficult to get behind. It’s glacially paced, and the revelations aren’t really worth waiting around for. It isn’t very scary, the images meant to frighten people completely ineffectual. The movie does have the titular forest going for it, the natural dread that comes with being so far away from civilization. But it isn’t enough to sustain the movie. It all just slowly trudges towards a conclusion that doesn’t really make any sense, the film just lacking the ideas to match the eeriness of its setting.
My Rating:
