The Forest combines the brilliant main ideas of Oculus and The Blair Witch Project but then ends up wasting 95 minutes of your life. First of all, the movie had suspense (which is the only reason I refrained giving it one star) that made me what to stay, just so I could find out what happened in the end. But it ended up being extremely predictable, because you know if a character is told not to do something, they do every single thing they were specifically told not to do, intentional or not. Honestly, the scariest part of the movie is in-depth stupidity of the main character Sara (Natalie Dormer) who goes into the Suicide Forest to find her twin sister. The only positive thing about her is her sisterly love, other than that, she’s stubborn, naive, dismissive and impetuous. Half the movie, I wanted to scream “Why are you doing that? That’s a terrible idea.”

Secondly, I was promised a paranormal movie and The Forest was no such thing. The Aokigahara Forest in Japan is told to have “angry spirits,” but apparently the spirits weren’t THAT angry since they didn’t make an appearance the entire movie. Everyone Sara met told her the forest makes you see bad things that are not really there. I’m not a psychologist, but I am pretty sure that if you’ve been told bad things happen in a forest you got lost in, and you are alone and afraid, you are probably going to start seeing things. That is just how the human brain works. The spirits are undoubtedly angry because the movie says it is “horror” when it is actually a psychological thriller. Talk about a letdown.

And finally, the movie is confusing and hard to follow at times. It starts right off the bat jumping cuts, making the audience wonder where they are for the entire movie. Although, something they did very well with the confusion was when Sara was wondering if something was real or not, it would make the audience contemplate if it was real too. Yet, as a sensible human being, you’d soon remember, Oh yeah, it’s all in her mind, so of course it is an illusion. Then you would get annoyed when she did something dumb because she thought what she saw was actually there. And then the movie’s director tried to create a huge plot-twist in the end, the problem is it only made the whole story worse. It was upsetting and made me leave the theatre irritated.

The trailers are misleading, this movie is completely scare-free. I was on the edge of my seat because I knew what was going to happen, I was just hoping I was wrong so I could be surprised for once. I was not impressed. It’s the kind of movie you see once and then you would be good for the rest of your life if you never saw it again.

Rating: 2 out of 5 stars