The Forest Fails to Please
- Krista Wagner
- Jan 23, 2016
- 3 min read
Suspense fills the body of this movie all the way to the edges of the mysterious forest. There are plenty of jump-scares throughout. Their placement is out of the ordinary too, scenes surprising you and scaring you at times when you thought the scare would come later. So in this case, Director Jason Zada does a great job creating tension. In fact, the premise proves original and fascinating: Sara and Jess (both played by Natalie Dormer) have always been close, and Sara can always tell when something is bothering her twin. So when she learns that Jess is missing after recently visiting what's known as Japan's Suicide Forest, she feels compelled to find her sister, who she is sure is still alive. With her sharp quasi-telekenetic link to her sister, Sara insists she take a plane to Japan, despite her husband's protests. Once she arrives in Japan, she runs into more resistance with the grave warnings of the park service's employees. But she ignores them and the fact that many people have commited suicide in the forest. All that matters to her, as is made very evident throughout the film, is that she find Jess. This sole focus should be a clue to us about the way the film utlimately goes, but it's so easy to fall into the intrigue of what's happening in the forest that we don't wonder too much about it.
With the aid of a local guide, who continually cautions her not to veer off the path, and a handsome visiting journalist--Aiden (Taylor Kinney), Sara starts her search. The guide alerts them that they will need to leave once it gets dark and return in the morning. But Sara refuses to leave the place because she believes it means missing the possibility of locating Jess. The guide very unwillingly leaves, Aiden stays, and they continue the search. We grapple through the movie like Sara does as she looks desperately for clues of her lost twin. And, almost immediately, once they see her sister's tent and belongings, and dismissing the warnings to stay on the trail and that any "strange" thing they see isn't real, they decide to venture into the deep and mysterious labyrinth.
As expected, she does start to encounter things, like corpses hanging from trees (these are really there), but other things too, supernatural things, like hearing the distant whispering of her name, seeing the eerie reapparance of a school girl, and being haunted by a past trauma. Before long, Sara starts to grow suspicious of her companion. The audience begins to wonder if Aiden is somehow involved in her sister's disappearance. So now Sara faces two obstacles: the omnipresence of demons and Aiden's disconcerting behavior. So, the story carries intrigue and mystery, yes. But then it lets us down.
All the clues and the scary scenery and flashbacks seem to serve the wrong purpose: to simply scare us. Instead, they should mean something, they should somehow connect to her pursuit. But they just seem to exist as some separate external force that doesn't carry as much signifance as the plot has us believe at first. And then there's the relationship between Sara and Aiden that continues to confound us. Is he dangerous? Or is she seeing things in him that aren't there? This is a nice addition, but instead of engaging us, we get Sara continuing on this narrow mental path, so focused on finding Jess that her tunnel vision becomes the driving force behind the movie. It just doesn't work.
The ending ruins any chance of redemption. It's nihilistic and pessimistic. I hate endings that take all the potential of a film and crumble it up into a spitwad.
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