Two stars. Rated PG-13, for disturbing images and content
By Derrick Bang
We must hear it half a dozen
times, from various characters: You shouldn’t visit the forest, because it’s a bad place. But if you’re gonna explore
it, then — no matter what — stay on the
path.
So, naturally, at first
opportunity, our numb-nuts heroine — and her small search party, led by a
supposedly experienced guide — stray from the path.
It’s difficult to endure movie
characters who behave with such unrelenting stupidity.
It’s also difficult to endure
movie scripts that are so sloppy and ill-conceived. Three people apparently
were required to write this laughable excuse for a chiller: Nick Antosca, Sarah
Cornwell and Ben Ketai. Antosca and Ketai have a minor string of TV credits;
this is Cornwell’s scripting debut. To put it kindly, she’d be smart to keep
her day job. Her colleagues should stick to the small screen.
Their clumsy narrative for The Forest is yet another example of the
idiot plot: a story that lurches from one scene to the next, only because each
and every character behaves like an idiot at all times. I’m guessing Antosca
& Co. were inspired, in part, by the New Asian Horror Wave that produced The Ring, The Grudge, Dark Water
and their many imitators; The Forest
occasionally, fitfully, achieves that level of atmospheric unease.
But director Jason Zada, in an
unimpressive feature debut, has only one unimaginative nail to hit as this saga
proceeds, and he hammers it relentlessly:
Our heroine, Sara (Natalie
Dormer), hears or sees something unusual. She s-l-o-w-l-y walks toward it,
cinematographer Mattias Troelstrup framing her face in an ever-tighter
close-up. Then, smash-cut to a whatzit that leaps out at her — which is to say,
at us — accompanied by an orchestral shriek from Bear McCreary’s score.
Every. Single. Time.
Is it just me, or are horror
movies getting more tired, more predictable ... and more dumb?
The story, such as it is:
The U.S.-based Sara wakens, late
one night, knowing — thanks to their shared bond — that something has happened
to her identical twin. Jess, forever in search of herself, is living in Japan
and teaching English to schoolchildren. During a few frantic and unsatisfying
phone calls, Sara learns that Jess ventured into the Aokigahara Forest, at the
base of Mr. Fuji, where people often go to commit suicide.
As a result, the forest has
become infested with yurei, the
restless and angry spirits of these suicides, who “encourage” despairing
visitors to join their ranks.
Stuff and nonsense; Sara knows that Jess is still alive, thanks
to their connection. Sara therefore hops a plane to Japan, and soon makes her
way to a rustic hotel adjacent to the Aokigahara Forest. She strikes up a
conversation with expat journalist Aiden (Taylor Kinney), a fellow stranger in
a strange land; his connection with an experienced forest guide — Yukiyoshi
Ozawa, as the pensive and brooding Michi — turns them into an expedition of
three.
Michi routinely scours the forest
in order to find the corpses of recent visitors, which then are collected by
search-and-rescue parties, and — I’m not making this up — stored like firewood
in the basement of the Aokigahara Visitors Center.
One rather suspects, after
awhile, that the Visitors Center would begin to, ah, smell rather bad. But
that’s just one of this script’s countless inept details, like the needlessly
chirpy young woman who “helps” visitors at her center.
Michi repeatedly warns that the
forest messes with one’s senses, most particularly when the person in question
is “sad,” as he insists is the case with Sara. That’s an eyebrow-lifting
non-sequitur, since Dormer doesn’t play her as melancholy, despite the presence
— we eventually learn — of a Tragic Childhood Incident.
If indeed Sara is supposed to be
suffused with an underlying sorrow, Zada obviously couldn’t draw that emotion
from his star. But, then, Zada obviously couldn’t direct traffic, so that’s no
real surprise.
Anyway, once deep in the forest —
and well off the path — Sara spots a tent that she knows belongs to Jess; her
stuff is inside, although she’s nowhere to be seen. The sun is dropping; Michi warns
that they shouldn’t be caught in the forest after dark. Sara stubbornly insists
on staying; Aiden gallantly joins her; Michi reluctantly leaves them behind.
Night falls. Stuff happens.
Dormer is a capable young actress
with an extensive résumé that includes classy TV roles — notably The Tudors, Silk and Elementary,
where she plays Jamie Moriarty and Irene Adler — along with solid supporting roles
in films such as Rush and the final
two Hunger Games entries. Fantasy
fans know her as Margaery Tyrell, in HBO’s Game
of Thrones.
Point being, Dormer is much too
good for this sort of low-rent junk. The tone also is entirely outside her
wheelhouse; she’s best as being crafty, scheming and slyly erotic. She doesn’t
do “victim” well, and is just sorta blah
here, with no common sense, and a one-note expression that is best described as
nervously wary.
Sara gets mildly flirty with
Aiden, but that could be our imagination. He’s certainly interested in her, but
then — as we soon discover — Aiden is something of a puzzle. As the second act
shifts to the third, this guy’s behavior becomes increasingly erratic, with
Kinney’s so-called acting all over the map. Ultimately, Aiden becomes truly
ridiculous, as if he belongs in an entirely different film.
Which, needless to say, does
nothing for this story’s plot-logic.
I’ll give Antosca & Co.
credit for one mildly clever narrative element: the disconnect between Sara’s
memory of the aforementioned Tragic Childhood Incident, and what actually
happened. This also is the one time that Zada gets subtle: Pay close attention,
because the clues are present.
But that’s hardly enough to
compensate for the rest of this film’s laughably inept touches.
Eoin Macken has a thankless bit
part as Sara’s husband, Rob. Rina Takasaki is an unsettling presence as
Hoshiko, a young woman Sara unexpectedly encounters in the forest.
Sadly, for all concerned, The Forest is precisely the sort of
post-holiday junk that longtime movie fans expect during Hollywood’s
traditional January/February dumping ground.
Two
weeks in theaters, and then — mercifully — something to be forgotten,
forevermore.
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