The Forest

I mean of all the obscure, overlooked, low budget horror movies waiting to be re-discovered in a DVD release, why pick THE FOREST? I love ultra low budget direct to home video or other alternative release horror. I love 80s hacker horror. I love backwoods slashers with fools wandering off into the night to be chased, murdered and eaten by psychopaths. I am all for the idea of non-professionals working on a horror movie as a way to maybe break into the industry or just making a movie because they want to make one. I am all for using found public locations, non-actors, no name talent behind the camera and in the studio. NO PROBLEM! The most evocative image from THE FOREST is it's opening shot of a couple walking in the distance across a forest into the woods: We see them as tiny, vulnerable creatures entering a dank gloomy world where humans may not be the top of the food chain or most feared predator. Then the film takes a dive & never recovers -- we briefly meet the backpacking couple just as they realize that they are being stalked. They get separated, both are butchered, and then we meet the movie's protagonists as they drive their car in a traffic jam. They meet up with their respective mates and decide to take a camping trip. Sounds of snoring fill the room as people who came over to watch a movie fiddle with their cell phones text messaging people not there telling them how much the movie sucks.

This film is too slow, this movie is too boring, and this movie is too talky. Which wouldn't be such a bad thing if the writers had given the people something to say other than the most stupid, asinine and unnecessary things. You know your horror movie is in trouble when the character with the most interesting lines is the droopy-faced park ranger who warns everyone away from the Cannibal Woods. And speaking of these "woods" they look about as far away from civilization as the overgrown vacant lot behind the soccer fields, only with bigger rocks and a stream flowing through it. There are impressive shots of the forest primeval, but no real sense of being out in the middle of it. If any one of the characters just sat down on the trail and waited long enough someone would amble by.

What is worse about the film is that it fails to generate any human interest: I don't know who these couples are and don't care what happens to them. The hermit cannibal slasher guy is uninteresting even when pretending to saw freshly cooked meat off the leg of one of his victims to serve grisly bites to her boyfriend, who just happens to seek shelter in his cave. The irony of which is the epitome of "underwhelming". Coupled with a deliberately ominous synthesizer music score, cinematography that suspiciously looks like someone strapped a camera on a dog and it follow people's movements, a lack of appreciable gore, nudity, lurid thrills and unwholesome atmosphere and what we have here is a horror movie that isn't even as frightening as a PBS educational TV show about how magnets work.

I don't mean to "dish it out" to the people behind this film, since they obviously went into the project with next to nothing, did not push themselves to be creative and ended up with just another boring movie about some maggot chasing women through the woods with a knife. There is nothing wrong with that concept, what is wrong is the unimaginative and utterly pedestrian way this was executed, right down to the utterly pointless conclusion when the film simply peters out at about the 80 minute mark. The best thing that you can say about THE FOREST is that it is over relatively quickly and there isn't much to command a repeat screening -- Hence my confusion at why anyone would feel the need for a DVD release. It was fine as a Prism Video rental years oddity, as a DVD it will be $5.99 rack fare inside a month of hitting the shelves. There is little or no urgency to see the film, unless you are considering making your own ultra low budget backwoods hacker set in a public park where nobody can charge you money for filming there. Here is a guide of steps to avoid making.

With all that said and done, the film did have one interesting sequence, or rather one sequence that was so pathetic and ineptly thought out that it becomes an enigma in an otherwise cut & dried film: The madman comes home to find his wife in bed with the local contractor. He dispatches his beloved, arms himself with a kitchen knife that looks like it was made just to be used in a horror film and takes off after the interloper. The guy corners and attacks his quarry, who sidesteps & runs away, only to have the psycho materialize in his footsteps with a bigger, badder weapon. The psycho attacks again, and the guy gets away. The psycho materializes AGAIN, and once more the guy gets away. Then AGAIN! Finally on the fifth try the psycho trips the dude so to fall on some sort of a bladed contraption. How did he keep materializing armed with bigger badder weapons like that? Is there some supernatural element to this psycho? Since the film never makes it clear either way the scene is just an enigma, staged to build some tension. It's purpose remains unclear. The whole film is like that really, existing without any need to be made and executed in such a ham-fisted, uninteresting manner that one cannot help but wonder what the point of it was.

3/10, and ample evidence that just because you can release a movie on DVD that doesn't mean you necessarily should.

This film is awful yet I actually watched the entire thing. It's weird. I thought it was going to be a stereotypical slasher film - and it is in one way, the people isolated in the woods with a killer - but in another way, it's different than most slashers because of the ghost kids and wife.

Ghost kids that are waiting on their killing dad to be dead so they can go somewhere in the ghost world (they haven't a clue as to where that is)... and the dead mom wanting to hurt her kids -- just weird. OH and the ghost kids help the one girl to live and her husband. The rest of the film is the crazy cannibal slasher dad trying to kill the couples. That's about it... not much else to the film.

There is something about this film that kept me watching until the ending... I guess just the weirdness of it all.

4/10

I've been collecting 80's slasher films recently and I got my hand on a copy of the Code Red DVD release of The Forest, a little known and not very liked 80's supernatural slasher film. The Forest is pretty interesting for your typical slasher fare, it revolves around a group of hikers, adults mind you are hunted by a cannibal hermit in the woods who is haunted by the spirits of his dead wife and kids. It gets a poor 3.5 on here which is the same of Don't Go in the Woods...Alone! and I will say The Forest is a better film.

Now, let's get down to the usual criticisms here. The acting is atrocious, the best acting in the film is by Gary Kent who plays the cannibal hermit and he's really not that good either but he's given somewhat solid character development for his character and he is not annoying which is more than I can say for a lot of slashers. The directing is about average for slashers, nothing special but I do like the setting and I think it's captured decently here. The body count is low, but this film is not about the body count, more about the story instead. The score I actually didn't mind, there's song which is horrendously funny but the score itself, isn't that bad, in fact, I liked the score they used for the opening kills. My two favorite scenes are the opening with the two kills and the flashback sequence though poorly acted by everybody but Kent, gives us decent character development and while cheesy, actually makes us sympathize with the killer.

The Forest is not a good film by any means and I paid quite a bit for the DVD but it's a solid DVD and I liked the film more than I thought I would. Recommended to slasher fans who want something a little different than just the killer in the woods formula.

Forest, The (1982)

* 1/2 (out of 4)

Yet another rip off of Friday the 13th, although this one here tries to be somewhat different by adding a ghost aspect. Two couples plan on going camping but the wives go one way while the husbands go the other way. Soon a hermit is stalking them because he needs something to eat. This film was shot for under $40,000 and it's easy to see on the screen. The acting is fair to say the least and the special effects are really poor but the direction isn't too bad. There are a couple good chase scenes but this hardly make the film worth watching. The subplot with the hermits ghost children is interesting but it really doesn't add too much. The film has a couple good moments but even at 85-minutes it's hard to sit through.

The title of this obscure and (almost righteously) forgotten 80's slasher inevitably reminds me of The Cure's mega-smash-monster hit song with the same title, hence a piece of the lyrics in the title-section of this user comment. Also, I didn't have anything else to say that was useful, anyway. But hey, "The Forest" isn't totally hopeless and not even *that* bad, actually. If nothing else, at least it obeys the, admittedly unwritten, first rule of 80's slasher: kill someone within the first 10 minutes of playtime. Sure you've heard about the basic premise of this film a dozen times before, but don't let that discourage you from watching it, as "The Forest" has a couple of things more to offer than just an appealingly sinister cover image. It's actually a bit of an atypical 80's slasher! The main characters aren't ordinary brainless teenagers and the script has solid ambitions towards supernaturalism. The concept isn't always successful, let alone plausible, but it's more than interesting enough to hold your attention and there are even are a couple of surprisingly strong moments of tension and plot twists to enjoy. Two married couples decide to go camping in the most isolated woods of California, but due to a stupid bet the wives travel separately from their husbands. Barely set up for the night, they receive uncanny visits from a mother looking for her two children, the children themselves and finally the father who's out hunting for human flesh. The demented family may be real or imaginary, but the women are definitely in danger and by the time their husbands arrive, they have already vanished. The men too encounter the family, and they find out more about the slightly dysfunction background. "The Forest" is a weird and unusual film, to say the least. It's not exactly a masterpiece of plotting, but the thoroughly strange atmosphere will certainly appeal to open-minded fans of 80's horror. The murders are fairly gruesome and will-filmed, including a slit throat and a painful saw-massacre, and the filming locations are stunningly beautiful. The more you contemplate about the story and its abrupt twists, the less it makes any sense, so my advice would just be to enjoy this odd viewing experience for as long as it lasts and not a minute longer. The acting performances are just above average, the music is okay and at least director Donald Jones (also responsible for the 70's exploitation-sickie "Schoolgirls in Chains") tried to be a little more creative that the majority of 80's horror films. Too bad it ultimately fails.