The Forest | Jason Zada | January 8, 2016
Horror movies with January release dates have become more of an occurrence in recent years, and The Forest is the first film of this year to continue to the trend.
The Forest, from first-time feature director Jason Zada and writers Nick Antosca, Sarah Cornwell, and Ben Ketai, follows Sara (Natalie Dormer), who travels to Japan after she has a feeling that her twin sister Jess (also Dormer) is in trouble. However, this trouble isn’t of the financial type, as Jess has gone missing in Aokigahara Forest after leading an ESL class trip. And Aokigahara Forest, better known as the Sea of Trees or the Suicide Forest, is the kind of place where if you enter, you don’t always come out.
The last time I can think of that a horror film went into a forest, it turned the genre on its head (The Cabin in the Woods), and the time before that brought found footage into the world (The Blair Witch Project). The Forest, however, does none of that. Instead, it relies on Sara’s “twin sense”, slow loss of a sense of reality, and typical J-horror ghosts with an intended psychological horror vibe that doesn’t stick. But in a forest known for suicides that’s believed to be haunted by the spirits of those who passed, we as an audience are supposed to believe that “twin sense” is a thing? Sure, we’ve seen it in enough supernatural movies to take it for granted, but real-world evidence is scant. Anyway, J-horror has gotten old fast in the States with the remakes (The Ring, The Grudge, etc.), so the spooks that appear in The Forest are laughable jump scares. And being a stranger in a strange land, Sara doesn’t find any middle ground among the Japanese citizens she meets. They’re either helpful (with maybe a little depth) or creepy.
That good-bad/light-dark dichotomy is blatantly present, in a way, throughout the film: Sara is the light (blonde hair, still has a sense of innocence from the death of her parents) and Jess is the dark (black hair and eye-shadow, saw her dead parents at the age of 6). This presents heavily during the 90-or-so minute film, practically hitting the audience over the head and leading up to an albeit predictable ending.
Acting-wise, Dormer is passable as an American, but a generic American at that. Maybe I’m just still in Margery Tyrell withdrawal. Apart from Dormer, the main cast includes TV drama actor and Lady Gaga’s boyfriend Taylor Kinney as Aiden, a travel journalist looking for a story, and Yukiyoshi Ozawa as Michi, a park guide, and they’re equally decent enough.
So if you’re planning to step into The Forest, do so at your own risk.
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