Location is everything when it comes to the atmosphere of a
film, the Eifel tower or Trevi fountain brings an air of romance, the amazon
has with it a sense of danger and adventure, and then there’s the Aokigahara
Forest which can only illicit feelings of dread. The site of real world
mythology the colloquially known ‘Suicide Forest’ is so dense and foreboding
that it has a history of despondent people wandering in to become lost and take
their own lives. It’s actually surprising that it’s taken this long for
Hollywood to leverage Japan’s dark forest, this year we get two films set
there. The Forest is the story of
Sara (Natalie Dormer) who travels to Japan after receiving a call from the
local police that her twin sister Jess is presumed dead after being seen
wandering into Aokigahara Forest alone. Once in Japan she meets a reporter from
Australia, Aiden (Taylor Kinney), who offers to take her into the forest with a
park ranger to search for her sister. Once inside the lines of reality begin to
blur as the forest begins to show it’s true nature and sheds some light on why
and how it received it’s sinister reputation. It’s been a decade since the
J-Horror phenomenon that was ushered in by The
Ring (which is on it’s way back in the form of a reboot), so are we seeing
the beginning of a resurgence or the last blip on the screen? |
| Like I wouldn't include this shot |
Let’s not bury the lead, this is not the start of a resurgence…but
the important part is, it could have been. Natalie Dormer shows surprising
ability and range in the dual roles of Sara/Jess and is easily the best part in
a movie that has more than one desirable trait (speaking of desirable, did I
mention Natalie Dormer). Dormer puts everything into the role, something that
most actors wouldn’t have bothered doing in a film that could be thought of as a
throw-away January calendar filler. The flick benefits greatly from this, she
makes you believe that you’re watching something worth seeing. I’m stopping
myself from just listing the good qualities the movie exhibits because there’s
one major step it’s missing. For a horror movie, they seemed to have glossed
over the fear factor. Not much thought had to go in to it, with the setting and
ingrained mythology they already had it should have been easy to craft a solid
psychological horror with real scares that stayed with you. Instead they
decided on sprinkling lazy jump scares sparsley throughout…it’s not just the
generic nature of the scares it’s the lack of them as well. That being said the
forest itself (though not shot in the actual Aokigahara forest) comes to life
as it’s own co-star and provides an atmosphere like only the best cinematic
settings can. It’s not the Overlook Hotel but it’s up there. Lastly there’s the
audio, the sound department rarely gets a lot of love but if there’s one genre in
which a good sound mixer can shine, it’s horror. What’s missed in good visual
scares is almost made up for in the auditory assault, understated and ominous
this is definitely the kind of film that will benefit from surround sound.
The thing about The
Forest isn’t that it’s a bad movie, for a cold Friday night in January it
will certainly fill an entertainment quotient (provided you’re not one of the 7
people who haven’t seen Star Wars yet), it’s that the pieces are there for what
could have been a classic horror film. Imagine The Ring without the little touches that made it unforgettably
creepy like the odd movement of Samara or the terrifying visuals of the tape
itself, that’s what you have in The
Forest. A film that does everything right except for the one thing it was
supposed to do…scare you.
Rating: 2 out of 5
