Why would anyone choose to go into some creepy woods? Obviously people who don’t realise they are in a horror movie.
When American Sara (Natalie Dormer) is told her twin sister Jess (also Dormer) is missing persumed dead while she was in Japan, Sara sets off to Japan to find her. When her search leads her to the Aokigahara forest, a notorious suicide site, Sara enters the forest hoping to find Jess. However she soons starts seeing disturbing things, is it something supernatural in the forest?
The Aokigahara forest is a real place and a well known suicide spot. I read about the forest in Sarah Lotz novel The Three and it sounded like a really creepy and distrubing place. Unfortunately The Forest fails to make anything scary out of a naturally creepy area. All the jump scares fall flat and as they are the main source of attempted scares in this movie it’s not a great move. Then there is the bad CGI and lack of good ideas in the script.
If there’s one thing in the film’s favour it’s lead actress Natalie Dormer who tries to elevate the material she’s given, but it’s an uphill struggle and she can’t save the film.
If you want some real scares then do some reading on the Aokigahara forest or read Sarah Lotz’s The Three (where I first heard about this forest) which fetaures Aokigahara forest as a subplot to her story.
Rating 1.5/5 – perfectly watchable but devoid of actual scares
