Movie Review: The Forest

A new horror movie comes out and I manage to find myself at the theatre.  This almost sounds like your typical sitcom.  The ending is also about what you’d expect.  The draw of getting scared, being surprised, sucks me into the theatre.  After that, I find myself scratching my head as to how a trailer that seemed so promising turned into an unmitigated tire fire.  There is a great episode of Pepper Ann (a 2000’s cartoon) where the main character, Pepper Ann, flames a movie, then is challenged by the director to make her own movie.  She soon discovers how a perfectly good idea doesn’t get executed the way it should.  I wonder if that is what happens to 99% of the horror movies that make it to the theatre.

The story behind this movie follows the connection between twins. One seems to have the perfect life, the other, not so much.  The ‘good’ twin is always saving the troubled one.  At some point, the good twin feels what I can only describe as a disturbance in the force, and runs to her sister’s aide.  The trip takes her to Japan (which, incidentally, who has money to buy a plane ticket at the last second?  Wouldn’t that be several thousand dollars?).  Her sister was last seen in a forest where people go to commit suicide.  The sister finds an American and they work with a forest ranger to go into the forest.  Nothing good happens after that.

On the off chance that you make the foolish decision of seeing this movie, I won’t tell you exactly what happens.  What really happens, in a meta sort of way, is that there are several huge threads to the story, none of which get enough time to be discussed.  There is the main story of the sister being lost in the forest.  There is a secondary story of the past that haunts both sisters (their parents died when they were six).  There is the story of the forest itself and the people who have passed there.  There is the story of the American who helps the good sister.  Nothing really gets resolved and while in some cases, loose ends are compelling, in this case they were just additional distractions.  This movie is utterly disorganized and disappointing given the concept.  It would be a wonderful video game.