The majority
of the story is set in and around the Aokigahara Forest, a forest at the
northwest base of Mount Fuji in Japan known as a popular destination for the
suicidal.
Sara Price,
an American woman, receives a phone call from the Japanese police telling her
that they think her troubled twin sister Jess is dead, as she was seen going
into Aokigahara forest. Despite the concerns of her fiancé, Rob, she journeys
to Japan and arrives at the hotel where her sister was staying.
At her
hotel, Sara meets a reporter named Aiden. They drink together, and she tells
him of her parents' death in a drunk driving accident. They were actually
killed in a murder-suicide initiated by her father, which her sister witnessed,
but Sara did not. Aiden invites her to go into the forest with him and a park
guide, Michi, so she can look for her sister.
As the three
enter Aokigahara, Michi tells Sara that Jess has most likely killed herself.
Deep in the woods, the group discovers a yellow tent that Sara recognizes as
Jess's. With nightfall approaching, Michi suggests they leave a note for Jess
and leave. Sara refuses, and Aiden volunteers to stay with her through the
night.
That night,
Sara hears rustling in the bushes and, believing it may be Jess, rushes into
the woods after them. Sarah finds a Japanese girl, Hochiko, who claims to know
Jess. The girl warns Sara not to trust Aiden and flees at the sound of his
voice. Sara attempts to chase after her but falls and loses her.
The next
day, Aiden and Sara become lost and begin to walk around the forest. As they
walk, Sara's suspicions are raised and she demands Aiden to give her his phone
and finds a picture of Jess on it. Aiden denies any involvement with Jess, but
Sara runs into the forest alone. While running she begins to hear voices
telling her to turn around. She appears to be unfazed by this until she hears
the voice directly behind her. She turns around to see a hanging body and
continues to run away. She then falls into an underground cave and goes
unconscious, later she wakes up and discovers that she is in the cave with
Hochiko, who turns out to be a yūrei. Aiden soon finds her and helps her out of
the cave and, with some convincing, they continue to walk together. Elsewhere,
Michi discovers the tent abandoned and organizes a search party.
Aiden brings
Sara to an old ranger station he'd discovered while looking for her. Inside,
Sara hears her sister's voice and finds a note which implies that Aiden is
holding Jess captive in the basement. Convinced that he is a threat, Sara
attacks and kills a horrified Aiden with a small kitchen knife. As he dies,
Sara realizes that Aiden was telling the truth and that the picture on his
phone, the voice at the basement door and the note had all been hallucinations.
In the
basement of the ranger station, Sara sees a vision of the night her parents
died from Jess's point of view. The ghost of her father suddenly appears and
lunges toward her, and she cuts his fingers away from her wrist. Running into
the forest, she sees Jess running toward the lights of the search party. Sara
calls to her sister, who is unable to hear her. She realizes that her escape
from the ranger station was another hallucination. When she cut at her father's
fingers she was actually cutting deep into her own wrists, and is now dying
from blood loss in the basement. As she succumbs to her wounds, a yūrei pulls
Sara into the forest floor. Her very much alive sister is rescued by the search
party and explains that the feeling of her sister is gone and it is assumed
that Jess knows Sara is dead. As the search party leaves Michi is seen staring
at a figure and realizes, too late, that it's Sara's spirit. The film ends with
Sara attacking the camera/Michi.
Goyer came
up with the idea after reading a Wikipedia article on Aokigahara. Surprised
that a horror film had not been made about it he came up with a rough outline. After
being pitched the idea, Zada instantly became attracted to the idea. He was most attracted to the fact that the
"Suicide forest" in Aokigahara was a real place, which he got
"obsessed with". devouring as much info as he could about the
location, including watching an online documentary put together by Vice. Prior
to shooting Zeda, took a trip to Aokigahara as he felt "There’s no way I
felt that I could make a movie about a real place, and not go visit it." Zeda had described the location as "...a
very frightening place. It was not a place where I wanted to spend the
night."
On Rotten
Tomatoes, the film has a rating of 9%, based on 109 reviews, with an average
rating of 4.1/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "The Forest offers
Natalie Dormer a few chances to showcase her range in a dual role, but they
aren't enough to offset the fact that the movie's simply not all that
scary." On Metacritic, the film has a score of 34 out of 100, based on 30
critics, indicating "generally unfavorable reviews".Audiences polled
by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "C" on an A+ to F
scale.
Brian Truitt
of USA Today thought the movie was a "mostly scare-free zone", and
gave it 2 out of 4 possible stars. He teased the premise of the movie, saying
that "[i]t’s OK to go into these woods because there’s not much to get
spooked by in The Forest, unless you’re creeped out by the occasional Japanese
schoolgirl." Comparing the film to some of its peers, he wrote the movies
is "definitely a step up from screaming teenagers and some guy running
through trees with a chainsaw", but expressed disappointment that the
"film never makes the most of its conceit".
Peter Keough
of The Boston Globe zeroed in on the writing as a source of fault, while
approving of the acting and directing, writing "Zada gets credible
performances from Dormer and Kinney, but their characters undergo such unlikely
psychological contortions that these efforts are to no avail." He echoed
the complaints of most critics, saying "Had Zada strayed more from the
generic path into such unknown territory, The Forest might have had genuine
depth and darkness".
Alonso
Duralde, writing for TheWrap, voiced these gripes as well, faulting the writing
is saying "By the time screenwriters Ben Ketai, Sarah Cornwell and Nick
Antosca unpack the inevitable third-act reversals and twists, it’s too little,
too late, especially since those revelations rely upon an investment in the
characters that the movie has expended too little effort in creating." He
praised Dormer as well ("Dormer, for her part, invests herself in the
proceedings, and manages to build two characters out of a script that barely
bothers to give her one"), while panning Kinney ("so wooden here he
could be playing the title role").
Neil
Genzlinger, writing for The New York Times, also praised Dormer's performance,
while finding enough within the rest of the film's aspects to give the movie a
positive review: "a decently executed creeper built around a convincing
performance by Natalie Dormer." Justin Chang of Variety also allotted the
film a positive review, writing "Dormer is sympathetic enough in her
double scream-queen roles, and Zada shows an occasional aptitude for generating
suspense through framing, music and sound design, even if the beats he hits are
often tediously familiar."
Slate's
David Ehrlich said that the film's release date was the most significant
indicator of its lack of quality. "Every year, during the first proper
weekend of January, the studios' niche labels trot out the horror movies they
know have nothing to contribute to society and leave them for dead in your
local multiplex," he wrote. "[A]nybody with access to a calendar
already knows that The Forest is bad; at this point, that's less of a
presumption than it is a tradition." Keeping with the film's setting and
themes, he likened the practice of releasing such films at that time of year to
the supposed ancient Japanese custom of ubasute, in which elderly people who
could no longer take care of themselves were abandoned to their fate on a
mountain
In October
2014, it was reported Natalie Dormer had joined the cast of the film.in April
2015, it was announced that Taylor Kinney had joined the cast as well.
Dormer cited
the opportunity to play two characters in one film enticed her to accept the
role. “That’s like a life tick box as an actor, to be playing against yourself.
It’s certainly surreal,” she said. “(But) it’s hard to make choices as Sara
when you don’t quite know how you’re going to play it as Jess yet. You haven’t
got the other actor to react against. You have to be a bit schizophrenic.”
Kinney cited
a confluence of reasons for accepting the role: the story and its location, the
ability to tweak his character, and the attachment of Dormer. He stated he was
looking for something "more cerebral than gory slasher films", in the
vein of The Amityville Horror, Friday the 13th and Halloween, as well as the
Stephen King adaptations Cujo, Pet Sematary and The Shining.
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