If a tree falls in The Forest, well … that might wake this lumbering giant of a horror picture. Lord knows it could use it.
You know the rumor about how an identical twin can sense when something is wrong with the other, even if they’re on opposite sides of the globe? This whole movie hangs on that unproven ESP connection. Sara (Natalie Dormer, TV’s Game of Thrones) lives in America; her sister, Jess (also Dormer, but with dark hair), in Japan. When Jess enters the Aokigahara Forest — famed for being a suicide hot spot — and doesn’t come out, the authorities consider the young woman to be a goner. Sara, however, believes otherwise, because she doesn’t “feel” anything undue. Insisting Jess is still alive, she nonetheless hops a flight to find her.
Once in Japan, everyone Sara meets tells her that she would be crazy to enter the forest, and that bad things will happen if she does. So, with the aid of a travel-mag writer (Taylor Kinney, TV’s Chicago Fire) she just met in a bar, she does exactly that, and bad things happen. Because the place is haunted by the souls of the damned, those bad things are primarily cheap jump scares.
Unlike our heroine, viewers aren’t likely to get lost in The Forest, because first-time feature director Jason Zada (co-writer of The Houses October Built) follows the template established by nearly every PG-13 horror film funded by a major studio; everything you expect to happen, does. At best, The Forest is subpar supernatural, beginning with legitimate ambience (as did another American-girl-in-Japan tale, The Grudge), squandering that once Sara enters the titular site, and cribbing its lone good bit directly from Insidious.
Nothing about The Forest is original, but no one expects it to be. They do expect horror not to be a chore to watch, no matter how well-photographed. Taking their minor characters’ advice to heart, Zada and company are so careful not to stray from the well-trodden path followed by countless others before them, they fail to see The Forest for the trees. —Rod Lott