A young woman searches for her twin sister in an infamous Japanese forest beneath Mount Fuji where lost souls go to commit suicide.
With the help of an American guide, she treks into the heart of the mysterious woodland, and encounters more than her sisters abandoned tent.......
With it being loosely based on a partially true story (somewhere on this planet, there is definitely a forest, a forest where someone may or may not have taken their own life, and it's in Japan), and written by a quite prolific screenwriter in Goyer, I was hoping that The Forest would take a break from the norm, and go for some genuine chills, rather than your bargain bucket jump scares.
And with all the potential the film had, with its urban myths and genuinely creepy setting, it offers nothing new, sells out, and goes for your standard teen horror jump scare by-the- numbers horror, and it wastes so much, as it could have been something wonderful.
Forests on their own can be quite daunting, they are endless, relentless, and the amount of thrillers that have a forest as a setting have that uneasy sense of dread throughout.
But to go to another country, to a forest filled with urban mythos, and to have your sister vanish in said forest, should have been the stuff of nightmares.
But no, you'll get irritated by the cattle prod like jump scares, the film pelts you with throughout,,and once you've seen one disfigured person standing behind the main character, or through this red binocular picture things from the eighties, you've seen them all.
Characters are bland, and atypically horror film stupid, and a half decent twist mid second act, is just squandered in favour of more teenage friendly boo scenes.
It's a shame really, reading about the actual forest is quite haunting, and then we are given this trash.
Watch Deliverance or The Edge instead.
Or something with Forrest Whittaker, or Deforest Kelly.
With the help of an American guide, she treks into the heart of the mysterious woodland, and encounters more than her sisters abandoned tent.......
With it being loosely based on a partially true story (somewhere on this planet, there is definitely a forest, a forest where someone may or may not have taken their own life, and it's in Japan), and written by a quite prolific screenwriter in Goyer, I was hoping that The Forest would take a break from the norm, and go for some genuine chills, rather than your bargain bucket jump scares.
And with all the potential the film had, with its urban myths and genuinely creepy setting, it offers nothing new, sells out, and goes for your standard teen horror jump scare by-the- numbers horror, and it wastes so much, as it could have been something wonderful.
Forests on their own can be quite daunting, they are endless, relentless, and the amount of thrillers that have a forest as a setting have that uneasy sense of dread throughout.
But to go to another country, to a forest filled with urban mythos, and to have your sister vanish in said forest, should have been the stuff of nightmares.
But no, you'll get irritated by the cattle prod like jump scares, the film pelts you with throughout,,and once you've seen one disfigured person standing behind the main character, or through this red binocular picture things from the eighties, you've seen them all.
Characters are bland, and atypically horror film stupid, and a half decent twist mid second act, is just squandered in favour of more teenage friendly boo scenes.
It's a shame really, reading about the actual forest is quite haunting, and then we are given this trash.
Watch Deliverance or The Edge instead.
Or something with Forrest Whittaker, or Deforest Kelly.