
In addition to Sara wandering about to locate the absent Jess she must reconcile her personal demons and confront the ghosts–both the ones in her worried mindset and the evil-minded forest’s creation–as she seeks out her disappearing twin.

The word got out that poor Jess was last seen frequenting the notorious Aokigahara Forest–certainly not an encouraging sign for both the country’s natives and visiting outsiders deeply intrigued by the Timberland of Terror. Jess had decided to take a trip to Japan. The saddened study of loss and hopelessness in an exquisite and mystifying woodland of wonderment is sacrificed for a serviceable chiller that sputters in its generic sense of dread and devastation.ĭormer’s Sara Price is on a menacing mission to find her missing identical twin sibling Jess in the Far East. Zada and screenwriters Sarah Cornwell, Nick Antosca and Ben Katai never fluidly marry the concept of despair and detachment with the ominous histrionics of the ghoulish Aokigahara Forest folklore.
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_The Forest’s_ winning formula, as it seems, is to rely on flashbacks in its step-by-step storytelling, exhaustive close-up shots on the film’s photogenic lead Natalie Dormer from TV’s “Games of Thrones” (playing put-upon Sara and her twin sister simultaneously) and needling through the conventional creepy impulses that the movie routinely trots out in suggestive suspense mode.įirst-time director Jason Zada has an interesting premise in which to work his grim-inducing hocus-pocus as his nightmarish narrative had the potential to raise the stakes of psychological warfare between weak-minded human psyche fragility and the deceptive mask of nature’s beautification. horror-made shell of ghostly paranoia that never really musters up any majestic titillation beyond its basic boo-link manufacturing. Instead, The Forest cannot seem to distinguish the light from its treacherous trees while delivering a hollow. The motivating myth behind the genuine hysterics of an Asian region that distinctively boasts the world’s second largest destination for suicidal tendencies should have been the selling point for this plodding, predictable doom-and-gloom chiller. So given the compelling inspiration for such an intriguing and real-life model of a Japanese posh and plentiful tree trunk haven of exceptional beauty and mystery then why does The Forest not resonate with the convincing chills and thrills of a harried horror showcase meant to capture the true scary decadence of the Aokigahara Forest’s mystique? Although the Aokigahara Forest (also nicknamed “The Sea of Tress”) acts as the last tranquil location for those desperate souls that want to meet their spiritual Maker it also doubles as a scenic and sumptuous tourist attraction for outsiders that embrace the essence of such a colorfully green, wooded paradise. “Suicide Forest”) at the geographical base of Mount Fuji where historically this has been the morbid albeit visually stimulating resting place for that country’s despair-ridden segmented population to gravitate in hopes of ending their lives among the smothering trees and twisty hiking paths. Of course the reference is reserved for Japan’s Aokigahara Forest (a.k.a. Some may be familiar with the backstory of the “real” _Forest_ and its disturbing legendary reputation.


The backbone of _The Forest’s_ conception is probably more fascinating than the horror film in which the narrative is based upon. Cool story, but I think it would've worked better as a psychological movie instead of a horror movie.
