More like the BORE-est staring Natalie SNORE-mer, am I right? I’m right.
For someone who writes about horror movies online, I am surprisingly unfamiliar with the popular horror franchises of this decade. Everything I know about your Conjuring’s and your Paranormal Activity’s, I was able to glean from commercials and trailers. That’s enough to get a sense of the current scary movie aesthetic, which leans far less on the gore of late 70’s video nasties, 80’s slashers or early 2000’s torture porn. Modern day terror seems to be generated exclusively through a series of jump scares, generally falling into a few specific types: Somebody creepy popping into the frame; somebody creepy appearing out of the shadows; somebody’s face suddenly distorting into a grim visage with a big hollow mouth and eyes. The Forest leans on these tropes almost exclusively, in the few instances that it deems it a priority to scare us at all.
The plot revolves around Sara (Natalie Dormer) chasing her troubled sister, Jess (also Natalie Dormer), to Japan’s Aokigahara Forest, known as a popular destination to commit suicide. The pair both experienced a childhood trauma involving the death of their parents, although Jess has been affected more profoundly because she actually stumbled upon the grisly scene. Sara recruits a forest ranger and a hunky reporter to help her track down Jess, ignoring the warnings of malicious yūrei that mine your subconscious to create dark hallucinations. Of course, the warnings prove to be valid, albeit in the least creatively satisfying ways possible. Some bad stuff happens, and soon Sara is in just as much danger as Jess.
The more distance I get from watching The Forest, the more incensed it makes me. It’s not just that it was a scare-less waste of 90 minutes, but the fact that it had strong enough assets to be so much more than that. Dormer is one of my favorite actors in Game of Thrones, capable of conveying exceptional nuance and garnering a ton of sympathy via her portrayal of Queen Margaery. The fact that this film was able to take one of the most naturally magnetic performers of our generation and make her so uninteresting is actually kind of impressive. Even more frustrating is that the premise set up a mystical forest full of ghosts that cause scary hallucinations, and director Jason Zada couldn’t come up with a single creative visual concept throughout the entire thing. In the right hands, this could have been A Nightmare on Elm Street for a new generation. Instead, we got a flat, safe snoozefest that telegraphs every boring twist and turn. If anything I typed accidentally made you interested in watching it, I suggest exploring the Wikipedia links embedded in the review instead. You’ll find that a much more entertaining use of your time.
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