Predictable chills grow in The Forest

Not waiting for Star Wars to slow down at the box office, Hollywood is returning to its regularly scheduled programming of weekly, medium-budget scare flicks. Opening this weekend, The Forest tells the tale of a young woman braving demons within and without as she looks for her lost sister.

Sara Price has not heard from her emotionally troubled, identical twin sister, Jess (both portrayed by Natalie Dormer), in several days. Sara learns that Jess, an English teacher at a Tokyo high school, disappeared while on a trip with her students to the vast Aokigahara Forest at the base of Mount Fuji. Leaving her husband behind, Sara flies to Japan.

Jess’ principal tells Sara about the forest, a place of dark greens and darker eeriness: During famines centuries earlier, families would abandon the elderly and sick in the forest to die.

“Their spirits have come back there, angry,” the principal explains about the yurei, the forest’s vengeful ghosts. Now a tourist trap, the forest also draws many people contemplating suicide (a tragically true fact about Aokigahara Forest.) Holes in the forest floor and electronics-scrambling iron deposits make navigating the copse of corpses extra treacherous.

Local police assume Jess committed suicide, but Sara senses her identical twin is still alive. In a bar, Sara meets Aiden (Taylor Kinney), an American travel writer. Aiden says he’ll accompany Sara into the forest if he can write a story about the search.

Aiden informs Sara about the forest’s unwritten rules—stay on the path and get out before nightfall—neither of which they heed. And a forest ranger warns Sara that a person’s fears and sadness invoke the ghosts. Sara, struggling with fear for her missing sister and latent sadness over her parents’ murder-suicide when she was a child, brings out plenty of ghosts. But the film keeps viewers guessing: Are the ghosts real or figments of Sara’s psychological breakdown? Adding to Sara’s (and viewers’) apprehension is her rising concern Aiden has sinister purposes for going with her into the forest.

The Forest (rated PG-13 for disturbing thematic content and images) combines the usual ingredients for a creepy chiller. Sara tiptoes down into unfinished basements and through narrow underground caverns. She uneasily opens doors and unzips tent flaps. And ghostly figures, widening their eyes and contorting their faces unnaturally, accelerate toward the foreground as the film’s music swells.

The Forest doesn’t share a Biblical perspective of the afterlife, but it does have commendable aspects: very little bad language (maybe two expletives) and few sexual situations. In fact, Sara makes it clear she won’t shack up—or tent up—with Aiden. And although director Jason Zada prefers cheap thrills to a deeper exploration of depression, the film, especially through the Carrie-esque next-to-last scene, certainly doesn’t glamorize suicide.