GARFY'S GORETORIUM

Welcome to my nightmare, in this post I will be reviewing 2016’s supernatural horror, set in Aokigahara, the suicide forest, that lies at the base of Mount Fuji in Japan.

Cast- Natalie Dormer, Taylor Kinney, Eoin Macken and Yukiyoshi Ozawa

Director – Jason Zada

Plot – After receiving a phone call informing her about her twin sisters disappearance, Sara(Natalie Dormer), travels to Japan in hope of finding her. As her search leads her to Aokigahara, known as the suicide forest, things start to become dark and twisted.

As recent years have proved, supernatural horror films have seem to have lost their touch but there is always hope for at least one of them to surprise you and actually be a good movie, The Forest is not one of them. This had the potential to be a great movie, a good cast, a good story and a great setting but for me it was a huge let down. In the past I had read articles about Aokigahara and found it quite chilling and disturbing, so when hearing about this movie being made and set in the suicide forest, I admit I was looking forward to it, although for clear reasons I knew it wasn’t going to be filmed in the actual forest, the idea was still original and gave it something to look forward to. It just was not scary at all, every attempt at a jump scare was a total failure and obvious every time, once the main character was told to “stay on the path” you knew she was not going to pay attention to that it was easy to guess what would happen. Also the idea of Natalie Dormer playing both twin sisters could have been a great performance but you only really got to see her play one of them as the other sister was more a brief appearance and even though they are twins I felt there wasn’t a strong enough connection for me to care as you rarely got to see them together.

 Although it wasn’t set in the actual forest it still had quite an eerie feel to it, I would have liked to hear more about its history from some of the locals just to make it have more of an impact once they finally enter the Aokigahara forest. The run time is 93 minutes, I don’t feel like this was enough time for a movie like this, especially with the history that comes with Aokigahara. There just wasn’t much to keep you interested and it wasn’t for executed as well as it could have been. 

This gets a low rating of 3.5/10, I wont be watching it again and I definitely wont be buying the dvd or blu ray.

If you would like to check it out for yourself, here is the trailer, but honestly, don’t waste your time watching the movie.