Aubrey Malone
The Forest (15A)
Horror films aren’t my preferred genre. You can be brave in a cinema seat in the middle of the day with a bag of popcorn in your hand but when you’re out at the coal shed that night and a squawking cat upsets a bin-lid you’re liable to jump a foot in the air with the memory of what you’ve just seen. I know I am anyway.
This one kicks off when Jess (Natalie Dormer), an American woman teaching in Japan, goes missing in the ill-fated Aokigahara forest after a school tour. She’s feared dead because the forest has a history of people committing suicide there. Or doing something equally shocking in an effort to resolve deep-seated psychological traumas.
Jess’ twin sister Sara (Ms Dormer in a dual role) thinks different. Like many identical twins, she feels she has an intuitive connection with Jess and can thus “feel” her presence. She goes to Japan in search of her.
When she gets there she evinces the masochism evident in most heroines in films like this, eschewing any smidgeon of common sense – like leaving the cursed forest at night and deciding to camp there instead.
She’s unfazed by the prospect of being visited by any evil spirits that might be knocking about if there’s a ghost of a chance – forgive the pun – of finding Jess. Her iron disposition is telegraphed to us early on when she ventures into a basement filled with dead bodies without appearing to bat an eyelid.
Her friend Aidan (Taylor Kinney) stays with her. Aidan is a journalist covering Sara’s story for a magazine he writes for. As time goes on she begins to distrust him. Does he know more about Jess than he’s letting on? Might he even have her imprisoned in a cabin?
Maybe it all has something to do with the deaths of the twins’ parents years ago, when they were mown down by a drunk driver who was never caught. Sara has flashbacks of this.
Flashback
The parents, strangely, are always indoors in the flashbacks, not out on the street. This is just one of the strange things we’re proffered in a very strange film. It’s an intriguing story about role reversal and the exorcising of personal demons and it has a good twist in the tale.
It’s directed with spine-tingling relentlessness by Jason Zada, who gives us moments of casualness that you know are just there to lull you into a false sense of calm before the next shocker.
The Forest may not rank as high on the Richter Scale of terror as The Blair Witch Project but it’s not far off it either. For much of the time we wonder whether what’s happening is real or a product of Sara’s very fertile imagination.
But one thing is for sure. The shocks are real, so you’ll need a steely determination to absorb them. Otherwise Mr Zada will put the heart crossways in you.