Sarah (Natalie Dormer) travels 6000 miles to Japan to find her missing sister Jess, but confronts supernatural terror in the ‘Suicide Forest’ where she was last seen alive.
Natalie Dormer (The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1) turns in an excellent display as Sarah, portraying a character that I certainly invested in emotionally and Taylor Kinney (Zero Dark Thirty) showcases a multi-layered character as local journalist and Aiden. I really liked the pace of this movie and it kept me intrigued, shocked and interested throughout and that was mostly testament to Dormer and Kinney but some plaudits also need to go to the largely unknown director Jason Zada who managed to time jump scares to perfection and create an erieness that was unnerving. Another plus for me was that the movie at just 90 minutes was on the money for this kind of tale, any longer would have felt forced.
I don’t want to say too much on this one as it may well give the whole thing away, but believe me when I say this is a pretty unique approach to a psychological horror and although it is difficult to come up with something really original these days, for me this at least looked like it tried and that deserves some credit as if could have easily gone down the ‘by the the numbers route’, made its money and been forgotten about.
My only real issue with this movie was around the relationship between Sarah and Jess. I would have liked to have seen a bit more as to why Jess was in Japan and why she in was in such a state that she felt compelled to think about taking her own life, as this was only very lightly referenced early on on in the movie, but I’m being picky.
I’m sure plenty of critics will dismiss this on the basis that it’s ‘just another Japanese horror movie’ and follows the ‘by the numbers’ formula, but these types of movies have been few and far between of late and I for one see it as a welcome addition the J-Horror catalogue, which no doubt will have a renaissance of sorts, especially as I have just heard that the third instalment of The Ring franchise has been green lit, I just hope Hollywood can be a bit more creative with the title and not lazily call it ‘Rings’ or something……oh that is what they’ve called it, that’s great, I will then expect ‘Forests’ to be out very soon.