Review of Into the Forest (2016) by Matt C — 20 May 2016

Not having read the novel on which it's based, Into the Forest was kind of a question mark for me going into it. A24 released a trailer very shortly ago, but it didn't say a ton about it. Its setup is intriguing, but it could lean into horror, thriller, or drama.

It actually leans more towards the latter two, and more specifically, drama. Into the Forest is a surprising little indie. Its first act could have been improved upon, but it's an intimate tale of a bond between two sisters, with great performances by Ellen Page and Evan Rachel Wood.

Again, I haven't read the novel, but apparently this deviates a noticeable amount. The film is about Nell (Page) and Eva (Wood), who live with their father (Callum Keith Rennie) in a rural farm area some time in the indiscriminate future.

When a large power outage spans the area for months on end, they have to keep themselves company while avoiding starvation and intruders. What's nice about this movie right away is that it doesn't focus its energy on what is essentially a post-apocalyptic world.

Given the over-saturation of this type of setup in recent years, it's refreshing to have a film that focuses on the characters and their own bubble in which they live. It's intimate in scope and punctuated by the type of humor that would be shared by these characters, but it doesn't undercut the heavy material that the film is carrying throughout.

Page and Wood--the latter of which I can't really recall any performances of--are both great and have great chemistry. They're entirely believably as sisters, and they also do great jobs playing far younger than their actual ages (Page is 29 in reality, but plays who is implied to be just finishing up high school).

Writer/director Patricia Rozema does a great job of immersing the audience in the location, evoking the memories that you'd have of hanging out with your siblings during a power outage. It's a hopeful film at times, but that hope is based within logic, and it doesn't overdo it.

In fact, there's one scene that's so dramatic and could so easily be exploitative, but the way in which it's shot makes it tasteful and harrowing, immediate and unique. The issues that I have with the movie are rather small in the grand scheme of things, but they unfortunately echo throughout the movie.

The first issue is that the film doesn't really paint a portrait of what these characters' lives are like before they power outage; their goals, desires, and interests are only grazed upon at the most.

There's also a scene that's rather pivotal, but the way in which it happens feels contrived and coincidental, almost like it's just to make the characters more desperate, and there's one character related to Page's character that isn't as well developed as he could have been.

Finally, there's a use of a song that isn't within the film's score, and it overdoes it in two scenes, riding the line into a music video instead. The problems within Into the Forest are luckily rather small, but it's a bit unfortunate that they appear within some rather crucial parts of the film.

Regardless, it's a movie that made fearful, sad, hopeful, and sometimes scared. It's an interesting take on the devolution of society and the immediate--and long-term--implications that it can have on people.

Its efforts are in the right areas and the filmmaking choices are, for the most part, really effective. It may be a draft away from being great, but it's a success nonetheless. 7.8/10, solid, one thumb up, above average, etc.