Cheap scares run amok in horrific 'Forest'
When people in Japan want to do themselves in, they go into the Aokigahara Forest - known as "the suicide forest" - at the northwest base of Japan's Mount Fuji.
When studios want to do in a movie, they simply bury it on the first Friday in January after the holidays - known as "the suicide release date" - and let it expire.
Mercifully, "The Forest" dies fairly quickly after a brief and forgettable overdose of fatal horror clichés, dodgy acting and a screenplay that reads like Hollywood interns wrote it up during their lunch hour and put it into production that afternoon.
Sara Price's depressed twin sister, Jess (both played by "Game of Thrones" and "Hunger Games" actress Natalie Dormer), disappears into the Aokigahara Forest (in reality, a Serbian national park outside of Belgrade).
But Sara can tell Jess still lives.
"She's my twin!" she shrieks to hubby Rob (Eoin Macken). "She's in trouble! And she needs my help!"
Rob tells her, "Everything's going to be fine," a blatant lie, just like when a teenager in a mad slasher film tells his girlfriend, "I'll be right back!"
Off Sara jets to the land of the rising sun, which anyone hardly sees after she skedaddles over to the forest with a self-proclaimed journalist named Aiden ("Chicago Fire" actor Taylor Kinney) and a local Japanese guide named Michi (Yukiyoshi Ozawa).
"If you see anything in the forest," Michi cautions Sara, "it's not real! It's not there!"
Headstrong Sara refuses to heed Michi's advice to leave the forest before dark. Aidan stays with her. So begins a torpid horror tale with things that go jump in the night and other cheap scares.
Weirdly enough, in "The Forest" press notes, producer David S. Goyer says, "We didn't want this to be a film that relied on cheap scares."
Really?
The moment Sara arrives in Japan, a man jumps out of no where and squishes his face against her car window.
Later, a dead woman suddenly appears to Sara.
Even later, Sara finds an old stereoscopic viewer in the woods, then clicks through several photos before a satanic face suddenly appears to rush at her.
"The Forest" is almost all cheap scares. Except, wait!
Now that I think about it, Goyer could be right. His movie - directed by Jason Zada, creator of the online viral segment "Take This Lollipop!" - doesn't contain many scares to rely on.
Dormer's performances prove to be the movie's best assets. She establishes instantly identifiable attitudes for each sister so we can tell them apart, although one has dark hair, the other one light.
Sara zeros in on the crucial difference between the twins.
"She looked at the dark stuff," Sara says, "and I turned away!"
"The Forest" is dark stuff.
Turn away.
“The Forest”
★ ½
Starring: Natalie Dormer, Eoin Macken, Taylor Kinney
Directed by: Jason Zada
Other: A Gramercy Pictures release. Rated PG-13 for violence. 95 minutes