Movie Review: THE FOREST

“Hang on… yeah, no, we’re definitely lost.”

When I use the phrase “J-horror,” what comes to mind? More than likely, you think of Sadako from The Ring; a Japanese school girl with long hair disguising her horrible face, lurching towards you from inside a TV screen. There’s a good reason for that; Gore Verbinski’s 2002 adaptation of Ringu ignited a pop culture mania in the United States for J-horror adaptations, leading to The Grudge and Dark Water, both commercially successful in their own rights (though critically panned). These films were both accompanied by and followed by an onslaught of English remakes of J-horror films, as well as sequels to the now iconic The Ring and The Grudge. Few, if any, of these are films that what even a generous horror fan would call “worthwhile.”

As of 2010, the trend of J-horror adaptations has subsided in favor of our own ghost stories, ignited by the runaway success of the films Paranormal Activity and Insidious. Nobody feels the need much anymore to adapt J-horror and while the new wave of scary ghost stories in the United States owes a partial debt to Sadako and her peers, they owe more to classic specters like The Amityville Horror or The Exorcist.

So, The Forest, then, is quite the anomaly. It’s not based on any pre-existing film and, despite being shot partially in Japan with a good percentage of Japanese cast, is created by directors and screenwriters from the good ol’ United States. But it is, distinctly, a J-horror film. Merely describing the plot confirms that; searching for her missing twin sister, a woman enters a forest in Japan where hundreds have killed themselves. The gimmick; the forest is a real place in Japan.

The woman, Sara, is played by Natalie Dormer, known best for her role in Game of Thrones as well as Elementary. Her performance as Sara is on par with the acting that has defined J-horror in the past; Sarah Michelle Gellar in The Grudge and Jennifer Connelly in Dark Water immediately come to mind. However, she pulls double duty, playing her twin Jess, who dyes her hair black. Jess is different enough in certain ways from her twin to demand some subtlety in the scenes they “share” and Dormer proves she has the chops to do this convincingly, though neither character really takes her out of her comfort zone. It’s not until later in the film that Dormer is put through the wringer as Sara’s trip deeper into the titular forest begins to challenge her grasp on reality, dark memories bubbling to the surface as nightmares seemingly emerge from the woods to terrorize her. Is the forest really haunted or is Sara going out of her mind?

Anyway, the film relies on a lot of the exact same scares seen in every other J-horror film; creepy old Japanese women jump at the screen, Japanese schoolgirls with long hair lunge at the audience, their faces suddenly horrible looking… ghosts of the hanged dead with burlap sacks over their faces lurk at the edges of the screen or creep up on Sara. I thought they were pretty cool but that’s probably because they weren’t creepy Japanese schoolgirls or old Japanese women. At a certain point I felt like I was watching “Jump Scares: The Movie,” particularly during the climax. Two or three of these is tolerable in a horror film but there’s a half dozen of them sprinkled throughout, all very much telegraphed to the point where I just wished the scene was over with already.

There is one particularly clever bit involving a body floating downriver that the filmmakers deserve credit for. It’s unsettling and it helps that the two actors involved sell the scene well. But that’s really the only highlight of the film I can recall. Everything else is jump scares featuring creepy schoolgirls or old ladies.

Unlike classic J-horror, The Forest toes the line between supernatural horror and a psychological thriller. Whether it falls on one side or the other by the end, it doesn’t matter. What does matter is that this movie is a perfect imitation of classic J-horror remakes, particularly The Grudge, and whether you like jump scares and creepy Japanese schoolgirls will automatically determine how much mileage you get from The Forest. For me, it was a disappointment.