THE FOREST

Directed by: Jason Zada

Starring by: Natalie Dormer, Eoin Macken, Yukiyoshi Ozawa, Taylor Kinney

AI Films

Well, this is the first movie I saw in 2016...

Intuition between twins...

Some theory said twins have supernatural abilities that make them look after each other, even when they were separated in miles. I have twin cousin as well and they told me that sometimes they got a hunch or bad feeling when one of them were in troubles, get sick, or something bad. So I knew the theory was not just a rubbish.

Jess and Sara Price are twins and they’re identical, but like any other twins, they are different in characters. Sara is responsible person while Jess is the wild one who made poor choices that make Sara clean up her messed all the times. After taking the job as English lecture in Japan, Jess is missing and like always Sara knew that her sister is in trouble so she flies to Japan.

Sara found out that Jess went to Aokigahara forest before she’s missing. The forest is known as suicide forest, the place where people goes when they want to kill themselves, and reportedly the most popular site to suicide in Japan and among the top three most popular site in the world. In 2010, it was estimated that nearly 200 peoples try to committed suicide and 54 of them succeed.

But Sara believes Jess still alive so she decided to search Jess but she’s warned repeatedly by local not to leave path. She meet Australian Journalist names Aiden then who offered to accompanied her to the woods in exchange for her story, which by coincidence also had plan to enter the forest with local guide name Michi.

In the beginning Michi refused to take Sara to the forest because he sees sadness inside Sara’s heart, which related to what happened in her past, sad tragedy about her parents who committed suicide and put her in perfect lies through her life because she shut her eyes to what happened. But there goes the journey and finally the three of them entering the forest until they found Jess’s tent due to spiritual connection that Sara had.

Michi suggested to leaves the forest before dark but Sara refused so hard and wants to stay tonight in the tent, waiting for Jess to come. Aiden decide to stay with her and asked Michi to come for them tomorrow. 

The local guide warned them to be careful because the forest could bring weird vision and hallucination. Sadly that’s what happened with Sara before she killed Aiden in the end and had to face the yurei (angry spirit) alone in that forest.

Eventually, Jess, the person who had to face dark side for entire life, survived. She was the one who open her eyes and saw what really happened to their parents could beat the dark force and comes out alive from the forest while Sara dies because of her hallucination which make her killed herself.

I like the rear scene when Mitchi stay a while, outside the forest, after the police cars left and sees Sara’s angry spirit stood beneath the darkness of the trees inside the forest and stare at him before it begins to strike, which I think put the sadness inside Michi’s heart because he failed to save Sara personally and that make him couldn’t continued his job as a forest guide.

It will be cool if there’s a sequel for this film and Michi becomes the main characters, after all The Forest is an English movie debut for Yukiyoshi Ozawa who acts as Michi and he had done good act indeed. 

I think he deserve the next part where Michi had to enter the forest once again because he had to found his relative...maybe his son or daughter...who want to make suicide as well. It will be equal treat similar to Sara for Jess. Well there always possibility for that, aren’t they? But if it’s not The Forest 2 (which I predict will be produce) there will be another film about Aokigahara forest because the myth was so famous in Japan.

Spanish comic author names Juan Torres claimed this film is very similar in plot, title, and look to his comic title “El bosque de los suicidas” which published on 2011 in Spain, I know what to respond with this claimed but I don’t know about you, perhaps you should go to the cinema to determine whether this claimed is true or not...