The Forest: Summary of a Badly Rated Film

I’m not really a fan of horror or thriller movies. They either don’t scare me, or I am just left confused. But for some reason, this movie caught my attention. The Forest takes place in a forest called Aokigahara, which is located in Japan. Aokigahara, also referred to as “the suicide forest” and/or “the sea of trees” is a place where people go to commit suicide. In this movie, the main character, Sara Price, played by Natalie Dormer, gets a call from Japanese officers saying that her twin sister, Jess Price, who is also played by Natalie Dormer has gone missing, and is most likely dead. Sara immediately disregards what the police had to say, and takes a trip to Japan, leaving her fiance, Rob (Eoin Macken) confused and scared. Sara stays at the same hotel Jess took shelter in before she went missing.

 Sara meets a reporter named Aiden (Taylor Kinney) at the hotel. They share a drink, and get to know each other.  Sara informs Aiden about Jess, also mentioning that she is going to look for her in the forest. Aiden is stunned at Jess and the fact that she planned to go there by herself. He offers to go with her and bring along a friend, Michi (Yukiyoshi Ozawa) that knows the forest.

With Jess determined to find her sister, the three of them visit the forest. The only thing they were able to find was Jess’s yellow tent she used, with all of her possessions inside. Michi tells the two that it’s time to go, but Sara does not want to leave now that she’s found something that belongs to Jess. Aiden volunteers to stay with Sara for the rest of the night as it would be reckless of Sara to stay alone.

Later on, Sara comes across a young Japanese girl who warns her about Aiden. With Sara suspicious of Aiden, she goes through his phone and ends up finding images of Jess. She is now furious and confused, so she runs away from him. Doing so, she gets lost in the forest by herself. While running, she falls into a deep hole. She sees the Japanese girl again, but then realizes that she is a demonic figure. Sara yells for help, which Aiden answers to. Ultimately, Aiden saves Sara from the hole. 

He tells Sara about a radio station that he saw while he was searching for her; the two make there way to it, hoping its a way to get help. After they find it, and as Aiden is working on the radio, Sara hears voices coming from the basement. It told her that Aiden had Jess locked in the basement. The voices get in her head, causing her to stab and kill Aiden. Aiden managed to tell Sara the truth, that everything she’s been hearing and seeing were in fact hallucinations. While this occurs, Sara’s fiancé, Rob, sets up a search party for Jess.

Sara is called into the basement, where she sees a vision of the night when her parents died. Her father came running towards her, gripping onto her wrist very tightly. Unsure of what to do, Sara cuts her father’s fingers off of her. Without knowing, she actually cut deep into her own wrist, as this was also a hallucination. As this was all happening, Jess was frantically running, searching for help. After a while, she bumped into Rob and the search party.

I was able to ask a very good friend of mine, Miguel Valadez a few questions about the movie.

For starters, “Was the ending something you’d expect at all”? Valadez responded with, “Not at all, really. I actually thought it was going to be a happy ending. She finds her sister and they both find the others and get out of the mess”. 

Valadez another question, “What was your initial reaction when Sara cut deep into her wrist, accidentally revealing to the forest that she wanted her life taken?” Valadez exclaimed, “I was genuinely so confused at first. I was like why does it matter that she cut the fingers of the dad, but then I realized that it was her wrist. I’m pretty slow so I was just like oh no that sucks but then it hit me. The forest made Sara believe that she was doing something else, but in reality it was trying to take her life. Totally made me spiral”.

Overall, this movie was kind of confusing. The plot was all over the place, but it still manages to be pretty intriguing. I just wish it was more of a true story than a made up one. It wasn’t super scary, but super thrilling! If you’re a sucker for paradox movies, you should definitely try this one!