Aokigiha-whatever: THE FOREST (2016)

AGAIN! WITH FEELING!

Am I seriously about to update twice in one week? It sure looks like it!

TITLE: The Forest


DETAILS: 
            DIRECTOR: Jason Zada
            LEAD ACTRESS: Natalie Dormer
            ANTAGONIST LEAD: Takako Akashi Whoops, I've said too much.

SUMMARY: 
A woman goes into Japan's Suicide Forest to find her twin sister, and confronts supernatural terror.

PERSONAL CRITIQUE:
Critiquing myself as a person, I get scared pretty easily, seriously, place a hand on my shoulder when I don't know you're there, I'm liable to scream and stab you with whatever's in my pocket. Critiquing this movie, is hard, I peered through half-open eyes the entire time! Not necessarily representing how scary it is, just how easily scared I am, but seriously:
 
It earned them! A lot of the horror in this film is actually drudged up in atmosphere instead of imagery, don't get me wrong, there are some super spooky ghosts, but the cast did a terrific job with sound effects and lighting. Movies hardly have to work to get me scared, and this one used mere setting alone to set me off. And old women and japanese school girls, seriously-

HOSHIKO! GET OUT OF MY BLOG! Okay, are you ready to skip over an underlined portion? I'm not! So...

 SPOILERS AHEAD!

Okay so as I said, the movie didn't have to make too much effort to scare me, but it did, right down to giving me a character I knew I couldn't trust, but thought maybe I could, until she turned into a straight up demon girl. And not like, red-skinned, pointy-tailed, scantily-clad succubus demon girl, like nightmare fuel demon girl. You've got a pretty in-depth plan too, from before she walks into the forest, you have a general idea of where this may be heading, though you won't catch it until she's stabbing a completely innocent man in the chest because Michi's mantra doesn't help her "If it's bad it's not real," may not be the best advice in a forest full of dead bodies, just seeing those things without being actively haunted is horrifying! There was this one terrific portion though, toward the end, where it ended. The movie speaks on women's duty to remain in the kitchen, she can't use a knife to save her life! Literally, not figuratively, while trying to remove the zombified hand of her dead father, she cuts her own wrist like six times, and then dies. I can accept that the whole point of Aokigihara is that people who wander in and are susceptible to its charms ultimately kill themselves, but she kills herself on accident, because she cut BETWEEN the villain's fingers. It doesn't even make sense! 

Real quick, before I get any sexist flack, the comment about women staying in the kitchen is a joke, I do most of the cooking in my relationship, but seriously, everyone should know how to handle a knife.

But yeah, outside of that stuff this was actually a terrific movie! Even without going to see it as a scary movie, it had a pretty good plot overall and it wasn't ridiculously reliant on jump-scares and ridiculous tropes. (Tropes yes, ridiculous no.)

RATING:
Nine out of Ten Misunderstood good guys, would give it Four out of Five Repurposed Nooses.

This one earned a spot in my "this movie both scared me and intrigued me" list, right alongside the Village, which is slightly less scary now, but whatever.