Quartile rating: 5.5/10 · 1 rating
Set in the Aokigahara Forest, a real-life place in Japan where people go to end their lives. Against this backdrop, a young American woman comes in search of her twin sister, who has mysteriously disappeared.
The Forest squanders a genuinely compelling real-world setting — the Aokigahara suicide forest at the foot of Mt. Fuji — with a predictable and poorly constructed narrative. The premise has inherent intrigue (twin sister dynamics, childhood trauma, supernatural folklore), but the script fails to develop tension organically, leaning on tired jump scares and a confused psychological-vs-supernatural throughline that never pays off. Natalie Dormer does serviceable work in a dual role but is let down by thin material and underwritten supporting characters. The cinematography captures some atmospheric forest imagery effectively, making decent use of the eerie, moss-covered landscape. Novelty is moderate — the Aokigahara setting and twin-sister hook are distinctive enough to lift it above pure formula, though the execution is largely by-the-numbers J-horror transplanted for Western audiences. The ending collapses under its own ambiguity, feeling unearned rather than thought-provoking, leaving most threads unresolved in an unsatisfying way.