Saturday, June 11, 2016

The Forest (2016)

Oh, Queen Margaery, thank you for gracing us with your lovely face in a horror movie.  The story of the Japanese suicide forest, Aokigahara, is pretty well known by now, and there have already been two other movies made about it.  The forest is associated with demons in Japanese mythology, and there have been many suicides there.  So, you know, let's take a Japanese tragedy and make an American movie about it.

Sara and Jess Price (both played by Natalie Dormer) are twins.  Sara is the more level headed one, while Jess seems to be more unpredictable.  Jess is teaching in Japan when she disappears into the Aokigahara forest.  When Sara goes to the school to investigate, the students are frightened, thinking that Sara is Jess's ghost, returned from the forest.

When Sara goes to the forest to look for her sister, she finds a visitor's center that collects the suicide victims they find in the forest.  An employee explains that the forest is inhabited by ghosts that trick you into committing suicide if you feel sad.  At her hotel, she meets up with an Australian travel reporter, Aiden (Taylor Kinney) who offers to take her on a guided tour of the forest the next day.

The guide warns Sara that anything she sees or hears in the forest is not real.  Well, besides the dead bodies, that is.  And the boy toy with her that may or may not be able to be trusted.  Demons and ghosts abound, along with a weird dead parents backstory that I never quite understood.

The one thing about this movie that both me and Scream King noticed?  Does her phone have an unlimited battery or what?  Did she ever charge that thing?!  She was prancing around the forest for like three days using that shit as a flashlight after she drunkenly tossed it ion her bed the night before.
Anyway, this movie was just okay.  The premise was cool, but there were too many unanswered questions about the backstories (dead parents, Aiden, etc.) and the ending was just meh.


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