Review of The Forest (2016) by Dario R — 23 Apr 2016

When you get a supernatural horror film about a young woman searching in an eerie forest that makes people commit suicide, does sound creepy. The Forest does fail at being scary, even bad at bringing in the cheap scares too. It is more like watching the main girl following through a long delusional trail with nothing happening in between until the end of the movie. Like every horror movies, many supporting characters inform the main person how dangerous it is going into the forest. And they do it anyways by ignoring all the warning signs.

Sara (Natalie Dormer) wakes up one night, feeling like something mysterious has happened to her twin sister Jess. She finds out Jess was last spotted, heading into the Aokigahara forest, which is known as the suicide forest in Japan. She heads to Japan, after hearing many warning signs that the forest does cause some delusions and possibly suicide. Even a journalist Aiden (Taylor Kinney) knows the danger, and is willing to aid in Saraâ(TM)s search for her missing sister. After discovering Jess tent and her nowhere to be found, it is only a matter of time before Sara tragic past and fears will try to get a hold of her sanity in the forest.

There was no thrills or scares that the movie delivered. It was boring at times, seeing two characters hiking the trail, looking for Jess, and slowly hearing whispers behind there backs. There is barely so much you can see and hear with the whispers and seeing pop up ghostly figures or corpses that show up on and off screen, which does not add any thrills at all. I love how the direction does try to play around with the paranoia of Sara having difficulties trusting Aiden, who is a journalist that may or may not know about Jess and her disappearance. Saraâ(TM)s delusions of Aidens motives rise, as they go deeper into the forest that makes both characters fearing the other. I feel like the subplot of Sara and Jess past of the tragic incident involving their parents death was forced into the story. Natalie Dormer did a decent job with her performance playing two characters Jess and Sara. The Forest just did not have any potential in being a watchable horror film that has nothing happening throughout.