The Forest – Movie Review

The Forest – PG-13
Release Date: Fri 08 Jan 2016

Natalie Dormer stars as Sara Price, an American searching for her missing twin Jess in an infamous forest in Japan. No one dares stay in the forest at night lest you fall prey to it’s angry spirits of the many people who have committed suicide in the area.

The Forest tries its best to jump into the action with a hasty and rushed opening. After that it does a moderately successful job of building up the myth of the suicide forest, which is something like the swamps of sadness in The Neverending Story: If you leave the path with sadness in your heart, you may never come back.

While I’ve become used to terrible PG-13 horror movies that rely solely on jump scares, The Forest is unfortunately firmly in that category. Natalie Dormer is usually great, but this feels like a paycheck performance for her or a very uninvested director. The story had some potential and the actors have all done better, but the by-the-numbers direction and “boom-sound” jump scares are tired and just not worth your time.

Nathan, Aaron and I saw it in the theater and had a discussion in the car: