THE FOREST (2016)

Studio:       Gramercy Pictures
Director:    Jason Zada
Writer:       Ben Ketai, Sarah Cornwell, Nick Antosca
Producer:  Tory Metzger, David S. Goyer, David Linde
Stars:     Natalie Dormer, Taylor Kinney, Yukiyoshi Ozawa, Eoin Macken, Rina Takasaki

Review Score:

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Summary:

A young woman searches for her missing twin sister in a haunted Japanese forest notorious for suicide deaths.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

Sara Price leaves her fiancé Rob and travels to Japan to search for her missing twin sister Jess. Because she was last seen entering the infamous Aokigahara Forest, the police assume Jess committed suicide.

At a bar, Sara meets bilingual journalist Aiden, who takes an interest in Sara’s story and agrees to help her find Jess. Sara keeps it secret that her parents died in a murder-suicide that mentally scarred her sister Jess.

Aiden introduces Sara to Michi, who serves as their guide into the Aokigahara Forest. The trio finds Jess’ tent, but with darkness falling, Michi suggests they resume their search in the morning. Sara insists on spending the night in the forest in case her sister returns. Aiden stays with her.

Sara experiences ghostly visions during the night. Following a strange encounter with a girl named Hoshiko, Sara falls and cuts her hand.

At first light, Aiden suggests returning to the path so they can seek medical attention for Sara. Sara begins suspecting Aiden is hiding something from her and may be involved in Jess’ disappearance. Sara runs from Aiden and falls through a hole in the forest floor.

Worried about his fiancée, Rob arrives in Japan. Michi returns to Jess’ tent and finds it abandoned, prompting him to contact police and organize a search party.

Sara explores the underground cavern where she is trapped. She encounters Hoshiko once more and discovers the girl is actually a ghost.

Aiden rescues Sara from the hole and takes her to a nearby ranger station to find a radio. There, Sara hallucinates Jess telling her that Aiden will kill them both. Sara and Aiden subsequently struggle over a knife. Sara inadvertently stabs Aiden in the heart and kills him.

Sara goes into the ranger station’s basement where she relives the death of her parents. When her father’s corpse reanimates and grabs her wrist, Sara uses the knife to slice at his hand before fleeing into the forest.

Jess sees the lights of the search party and runs toward them. Spotting her sister, Sara follows after Jess. However, Sara is cut off by Hoshiko. As Jess makes it to Rob and the search party, Sara realizes she has become a ghost, having slit her wrist and died in the ranger station basement during the vision of her father’s attack.

Rob and the search party leave with Jess. Michi stays behind momentarily, peering into the dark of the forest. Sara’s ghost suddenly lunges at him.

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Review:

Japan’s Aokigahara Forest should be known for its lush greenery, popular ice caves, and scenic beauty of nearby Mount Fuji.  Instead, legends of yurei and a tragic association with scores of suicides have earned it the nickname “Suicide Forest.”

That’s why when young American teacher Jess goes missing among the trees, police assume death by her own hand.  Twin sister Sara doesn’t believe it.  A family tragedy gave Jess a deep emotional scar from which she never fully healed, but the unbreakable bond of an identical sibling tells Sara something other than suicide has Jess in its grip.  With help from a journalist met by seeming chance, Sara journeys to Japan to uncover the forest’s possibly supernatural secret and reveal the truth behind her sister’s mysterious disappearance.

“The Forest” is, in a word, boring.  Every character, every scene, every setup for a scare drowns in an ocean of commonplace convention, watering down everything until any flavor other than ordinary washes away.  In what can only be rationalized as a misfired strategy for lowest common denominator appeal, the shooting script sees its spine broken from the strain of homogenizing content to be as patently pedestrian as possible.

Star Natalie Dormer is known for her role on “Game of Thrones,” where she plays a complicated royal who is often sly, sardonic, charming, cunning, calculating, and seductive, yet occasionally uncertain, pragmatic, fearful, even subservient.  Good luck finding even one adjective fit for describing Dormer’s character in “The Forest.”

Sara arrives in Japan one minute into the movie.  Fleeting flashbacks remembered while cabbing to her hotel then fill in bare minimum backstory, providing context for the plot, yet forgetting to fully form the people.

Jess and Sara’s relationship is established easily enough.  They have the type of sweet cinema sister bond satisfied with the simplicity of playfully throwing laundry at one another while giggling.  It’s easy to believe Dormer as two separate women.  Makeup and wardrobe do the work of visually demarcating Jess with a slight outsider punk look while Dormer fulfills it via a distinguishably different edge in her performance.

Despite exponentially more time on screen, Sara isn’t afforded an even opportunity to develop definable characteristics.  Virtually the only thing learned about her is how she reacts to sudden jump scares.  Other than the driving desire to find her sister, how Sara feels about anything else is more of a mystery than Aokigahara Forest.  She dresses smartly and sips wine at a dinner party, so maybe she is an upper class society type.  Except she appears outmatched by the sight of live shrimp while dining on sushi, so perhaps she isn’t that cultured after all.  Who knows who she is, or who “The Forest” wants her to be.

Perhaps her fiancé Rob, a character who the story has as much use for as a platypus does for underpants, can offer insight.  At least, I think Rob is her fiancé.  He and Sara have rings on their fingers, though Sara’s is diamond-less.  Presumably they are engaged.  Perhaps they are already married.  “The Forest” isn’t clear about details like this, although it doesn’t matter.  Rob could be written as Jess and Sara’s brother, or written out entirely, and everything important to the plot would remain unchanged, a trait common with most elements in the movie.

Her ambiguous relationship with Rob immediately extinguishes any chemistry between Sara and Aiden, the man she meets in a Tokyo bar who takes an interest in Sara’s personal quest and becomes one of two hands-on guides through the forest.  Is there trouble at home that has her bonding over beers with another expatriate, or is this just friendly convo between two fellow strangers in a strange land?  Is romantic tension even intended here?  If so, how is the audience meant to digest it when nothing is known about what Rob means to Sara and thus, how Aiden complicates that picture?  Empty definition in every relationship sucks out all emotional drama, right up through a climactic embrace that is particularly anti-climactic.

Credited to three independent screenwriters, each apparently Frankensteining new work onto an old frame existing in inherited drafts, “The Forest” appears to be a case of retooling to a point where whatever anyone originally intended is no longer recognizable.  What is evident is that someone realized the dull affair taking shape and insisted on inserting dream sequence gotchas, homeless men banging on car windows, and assorted cheap boos sticking out like sore thumbs desperate to open eyelids.  When the climax closes on a cut to black after dashing into a ghost’s face, a white flag raises all the way up to signal total abandonment of substantive fright and originality.

It is an easy sell to spend 90 minutes with Natalie Dormer as the guide through a haunted foreign forest.  But by shackling her at the wrist to a flat script with a plateaued plotline, the advantage of casting an engaging actress is entirely useless.  “The Forest” is so consumed with being safe, PG-13 multiplex filler that it is by consequence unremarkable.

Review Score:  35

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