The Forest (2016)

As a whole the movie works and is very satisfying. It's like a joke that seems to have a weak set up that's made up for with a hilarious punchline, but waiting for the punchline to come in a feature film can be dull.

It's not like pulling teeth dull or anything like that, It is a good story. It really does not hurt that Natalie Dormer is fun to look at for an hour or two as she plays a woman looking for her twin sister who entered a forest in Japan known to attract those who want to commit suicide and never comes out. For those of you not into Dormer, Taylor Kinney is in it as well as a reporter trying to help, but has his own agenda. If you you don't like either actor that will be a problem cause for the most part it's the two of them in the woods for the majority of the film.

It's not as scary or frightening as I hoped for. The disturbing images did the trick, but it did not get my heart jumping like I expected, but it feels like the overall story is what is supposed to haunt you. I get it but I'm not all that impressed.

Fmovies: Natalie Dormer plays a woman who is searching for her twin sister(also Dormer) who has gone missing in Japan, last seen in a forest where everybody seems to die, but she is determined to find her no matter what, but will she find her, or will the forest drive her insane?

The film does have some good scares, and Natalie Dormer does give it her all here. But the story itself feels to cut down, and actors like Taylor Kinney who play it so bland, he just does not have much to work with. The movie tries to hard and it shows, the ending does not leave much to be explained. All in all, it could have been better. Just don't leave much to enjoy all of it.

As far as horror movies goes this one is not bad..The theme of the suicide forest is intriguing.The stranger in a strange land them works well here.the film avoids most of the horror clichés.

It has plenty of creepy moments and you'll jump a few times.The production is high and Natalie Dormer gives a good twist on the scream queen ..Her character is not dumb repeating cliché lines and behavior..The questions that run though your head her character answers.The film has a dark ending and is not fairy tale at all..I don't understand why its so poorly rated its not that bad...its a good scary movie.....

The Forest fmovies. 5.5 I would say is right on the money. Not academy material but good for a couple of jump scares. Just saw the movie tonight. First jump scare was so good lady next to me spilled her full bag of popcorn and tipped over her drink...we laughed and laughed...then the usher came.

I had the movie pegged to go in another direction but I guess the joke was on me, and everyone I was with thought the movie was going in the same direction I thought, so it was pleasant surprise that it was not that predictable.

Overall 5.5 is good, watchable, scary enough. More psychological than it was Horror or Terror.

It was a little light on the Horror, and there was 1 single plot line, but still enjoyed it.

Upon seeing Jason Zada's "The Forest," I feel like I'm at a point of indifference I have never been at before when it comes to watching and reviewing films. Normally, I emerge from films eager to talk about some aspect, or feel empowered to emphasize details or things in the film I wouldn't have thought general audiences might have noticed themselves. With "The Forest," I emerge with depressingly little to talk about. It's become far too common to kick off a new year with an underwhelming horror film (2012 had "The Devil Inside," 2013 had "Texas Chainsaw 3D," 2014 had "Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones," and 2015 had "The Woman in Black 2: Angel of Death"), and if nothing else, that seems to be the only constant in American cinema alongside with a surefire hurricane of blockbusters starting in May and continuing through July).

"The Forest" is set in the Aokigahara Forest, located in Japan's sacred Mount Fuji. It is a forest that was once known as the place where family members would leave sick, crippled, or disabled loved ones to die during times of famine and war, and in present day, is a popular suicide location. We focus on Sara Price (Natalie Dormer), a young woman who gets a call from the Japanese police telling her that her missing twin sister Jess (also played by Dormer) is dead after she was seen going into the Aokigahara Forest. Knowing her sister all too well, and knowing that she is unstable but not suicidal, Sara commits to flying halfway across the world to try and find her, as a strong part of her believes she is still alive.

Sara's belief is only strengthened when she sees that the body discovered is not Jess, leading her to believe that her sister is still somewhere deep in the forest. At a bar one night, she meets an Australian reporter named Aiden (Taylor Kinney), who decides to do a story on her and her quest to find her sister. She tells him how Jess was always the one that looked toward danger, when she turned her head; she recalls when their parents were killed by a drunk driver and how Jess saw the bodies while she closed her eyes. The next morning, the two venture into Aokigahara with a park ranger named Michi (Yukiyoshi Ozawa), in efforts to try and find Jess.

The idea of the forest, as explained in very disjointed and vague manners by the locals throughout the course of the film, is that if there is an inkling of sadness in your heart upon entering Aokigahara, it will be exploited through things that you will see in the forest to the point where you'll believe the only way out is suicide. Michi explains to Sara upon entering deep into the woods that anything she sees from here on out is a result of hallucinations and her own mind playing tricks on her. The natural world leaves as soon as you abandon the trail of the forest.

"The Forest" is marginally effective in creating atmosphere, especially during the late night and early morning scenes when the forest becomes less a collection of trees, branches, and leaves and more of an abstract maze. The issue the film has is rooted in the screenplay, penned by Nick Antosca, Sarah Cornwell, and Ben Ketai. In order for the character relationships and the setting to be simultaneously successful, or at the very least harmonious, they need to be equally developed. Initially, the trio of screenwriters do this right by giving Sara enough time before she has to go in the forest to allow her personality to be open to us to get to k

It was obvious that, sooner or later, someone was going to make a film about the legendary forest of Aokigahara, widely known as "the Suicide Forest" due to the big quantity of persons who commit that act there (between 50 and 100 each year, even though the Japanese government doesn't announce the total numbers anymore in order to reduce the fame of that site), maybe inspired by the book The Complete Suicide Manual, which recommended it as an ideal place to do that. But, well... leaving its origin aside, the subject is undoubtedly fascinating and disturbing. Pity that the film The Forest wasn't able to do anything interesting with it. From the beginning, The Forest displays many elements copied in the same degree from the old J-Horror and the Hollywood horror (strident music, nightmares, faces deformed digitally, etc.). And with those visual clichés and cheap thrills, The Forest advances until leading to an unnecessary twist which is more irritating than surprising, due to the arbitrary manipulation of events which doesn't even adequately solve the "mystery" of the damned forest. Another problem is the main character's characterization. As we can suppose, she's completely skeptical on the beginning before the warnings of the supernatural entities inhabiting the forest; her purpose is finding her twin sister, and she won't let any local superstitions to interfere in her mission. But she almost immediately recognizes the fact that, effectively, the uncountable suicides created a malignant atmosphere in the forest, and not everything is like it seems. And then, she stops believing, thinking that everything has a natural explanation. And then, she believes in ghosts again. And then, she doesn't. And then, she does. And that's how things proceed until I couldn't care less about the final answer, which ended up being irrelevant anyway, because of the previously mentioned twist. On the positive side, actress Natalie Dormer makes a good work in the dual role of Sara and Jesse, displaying equal credibility in the suspense sequences and the dramatic scenes she shares with her "sister" or the gallant in turn. And the forest in which most of the movie was shot (located in Serbia) is undoubtedly lugubrious and threatening, unlike the squalid Czech forests we have frequently see in similar horror films; pity that there are too many scenes in almost total darkness which avoid us from appreciating the most dismal details. In conclusion, I liked Dormer's performance and the Serbian locations, but I found The Forest a boring and uninteresting film in spite of that, and I can't recommend it.