The Forest

A typically lackluster PG-13 horror effort, The Forest follows Natalie Dormer’s Sara as she travels to Tokyo after her sister goes missing and subsequently embarks on a trek through the city’s famed (and feared) suicide forest – with the character receiving assistance from a travel writer (Taylor Kinney’s Aiden) who may or may not be as helpful as he seems. It’s worth noting that The Forest, before it goes hopelessly downhill, boasts a fairly watchable vibe that’s heightened by first-time filmmaker Jason Zada’s stylish directorial choices, with the movie’s first half faring better-than-expected thanks to an ongoing inclusion of surprisingly effective sequences. (There is, for example, a fantastic and thoroughly creepy interlude in which Sara visits a basement morgue to possibly identify her sister’s body.) Even during its passable moments, however, The Forest‘s slick sensibilities ensure that it’s unable to establish an atmosphere of dread and, even worse, is almost entirely lacking in authentic scares (ie there are way too many false “jump” moments here, to be sure). Far more problematic is the movie’s deliberate shift into an increasingly meandering midsection, as scripters Nick Antosca, Sarah Cornwell, and Ben Ketai place a growing emphasis on the rather tedious question of whether or not Sara is imagining the various threats surrounding her – with the inclusion of a (possible) human villain only compounding the movie’s lackluster vibe. By the time the endless final stretch, which revolves mostly around Sara’s running-and-hiding exploits in the title locale, rolls around, The Forest has squandered what could (and should) have been a spooky little horror flick – with the impressively grim finale coming far too late to make a positive impact.

** out of ****