The Forest: Smokin’ Some J (Horror)

Days past:  We hitch a steamer out onto the Pacific, trek it out to the wild Orient.  Depending on where we end up, we’ll either indulge ourselves in some quality hashish, maybe a bit of pure blow, languish a bit with a good helping of opium, whatever flames our eyes.

Today:  We’ve not finished expropriating bits and pieces of Asian culture, especially where Japan is concerned.  Be it sushi, RPGs, or various manga and anime, the States have quite the appetite for popular Japanese goodies.  When, in the early years of this here twenty-first century, Japanese horror movies began to migrate to our shores, with Ringu and Ju-On, Hollywood took notice as surely as you’d expect.  Soon came the remakes (hi, The Ring and The Grudge), watered-down versions of some actually pretty creepy and heady stuff.  Removed were any deep cultural references or things that might not translate quite so well to American audiences, but remnants lived up to their names by perniciously keeping certain fragments of Japan in there.  The result was a muddle of interpretations and confusion, all leading to weak-ass horror tropes that roundeyes just didn’t fully grasp.  Chalky, long-haired girls prowled hallways, uniformed school children marched along their merry ways, strange happenings pervaded, and Americans didn’t really understand why they were meant to be scared by them.  We just weren’t properly informed.

Time has past, but we haven’t learned much of anything, have we?  Proof positive: The Forest.

There are three things on full display here:

1. Natalie Dormer – More than an extraordinary beauty, Ms. Dormer has proven her acting chops in the past, what with her killer turn as Anne Boleyn on The Tudors and work on Elementary and Game of Thrones.  A fantastic eyes aids in an ability to glower and sneer better than anyone, and a natural poise ensures she’s rarely, if ever, kept to the background.  Here, we’re given quite the theoretical treat: twin Dormers, an enticement you don’t have to be an architect to enjoy.  There’s plenty of screen time for her, too.  Unfortunately, she’s given some mid-grade-at-best dialogue to work with, and a plot that just doesn’t work.  It’s a waste of talent, to be sure.
2. Aokigahara – Situated at the foot of Mt. Fuji sits Aokigahara, known to Westerners as a place where many Japanese venture every year to end their own lives.  It is dense, it is secluded, and it is rather lovely.  Plenty of glory shots of the forest dot the film, including several that look as though they just escaped the editor’s blade.  We get some great glimpses, indeed, but they’re partially ruined by a color-correction scheme that washes out much of the otherwise lush colors and a focus on night scenes that limits any visibility of the natural splendor.  Another waste, to be sure.
3. Hollywood ineptitude – Strands of this can be found in the above, but there’s more to behold here.  The entire setup to the plot is delivered in a quick bit of padding at the very beginning, comprising maybe 5-10 minutes at most of rapidly-edited and barely-scripted footage that is barely comprehensible.  Once in Japan, we are treated to a mixture of fragmented psychological vomit, red herrings galore, mindless misappropriations of J-Horror cliches, and Blumhouse-fingerprinted jump scare attempts.  (I say attempts there because no one in my theater, which was populated with a handful of teenagers beyond myself, even flinched at any of the scary stings.)  Seriously, they shoehorned in some crappy CGI ghosts (I think that’s what they were, anyway) to populate the forest at night, pointless jumps were thrown at various points, and a “creepy” little schoolgirl, trying very hard to be frightening and ominous but failing pretty hilariously, joins in on the lack of fun.

All told, The Forest just can’t hold up to its own promises.  It wants to incorporate some neat Japanese legends and J-Horror tropes into a Western-style slow-burn horror flick, but the filmmakers were not up to the task.  Instead, we got a decent-looking film bogged down with a hole-laden script, a slipshod excuse for editing, mediocre chills at best, and an overabundance of stereotypical Hollywood horror cliches.  What could have been pretty good instead finds itself awash in similar January horror flotsam, the kind of thing that’s unfortunately become an annual tradition.

I’m gonna hang onto those images of twin Dormers, though, y’know, just in case they come in handy later…