Natalie Dormer (‘Game of Thrones’
and ‘Hunger Games: Mockingjay' both parts) adds “Scream Queen” to her resumé
with her starring role in the latest J-Horror (Japanese Horror) movie ‘The
Forest.’ Inspired by the mythical
Aokigahara Forest, infamously known as the place where people go to commit
suicide, ‘The Forest’ seeks to chill the audience the same way ‘The Ring’ and
‘The Grudge’ did so many years ago.
Dormer plays Sarah, a young woman
whose twin sister “disappeared” in the Aokigahara Forest. With the preternatural connection that twins
are famously known for, she sensed that her twin was lost but still alive. Hopping on the next flight to Japan, she went
in search of her missing sister. With
the aid of a strapping Australian reporter (Taylor Kinney), Sarah ventures into
‘The Forest’ and encounters a series of strange apparitions and supernatural
happenstances that could be either real or imagined. That’s J-Horror for you.
While ‘The Forest’ was intriguing
at first, it soon lost momentum about midway through and the ending simply
collapsed into an unbelievably jumbled mess.
The scares were few and far in between and not really scary at all. As a horror fan (and Asian horror in
particular), I am sorely disappointed in this rather limp and passionless
effort. If I have to find something positive
at all to say about the film, it’s that it was not filmed in shaky camera
“found footage” style. And that’s the
only reason I didn’t give it an F.
Grade: D
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