The Forest

“The Forest” is the latest in the trend of poorly made, PG-13 horror movies. This one stars Natalie Dormer from “Game of Thrones” as Sara, a woman whose twin went missing in the Japan’s suicide forest. After the police refuse to search for her, Sara goes to Japan herself and into the forest to track her down. While there, she meets Aiden, who offers to guide her through the forest. Once in the forest their minds begin to play games with them. For sake of not revealing spoilers, I won’t go into any more plot details.

Suicide is part of the plot, though not a prominent piece. More offensive is the film turning an actual location, where many troubled people have committed suicide, into a gimmick. To its credit, it does take suicide seriously within the context of the film, but it is still somewhat offensive in its portrayal of the suicide forest.

Spiritually, there is nothing Scripturally accurate. It deals with souls left on Earth, and never goes into much detail on why they are “left there,” or the existence of God, heaven or hell. The film essentially avoids dealing with how this story takes place in regards to any religious belief.

Content-wise, this is relatively clean for a PG-13 film. There is no sex or nudity (just some cleavage). It does have some violence and definitely some scares for younger viewers. Many would likely find the horror more lame than scary, bordering on humorous. There is basically no blood (other than rotting corpses), and some fairly tame violence. In regards to foul language, there are about three uses of the s-Word, a few utterances of the d- and a-words, and several profanities.

The main issue in this film is the concept of spirits being left on Earth, though it is not done in a demonic manner, nor is it particularly scary.

Due to the subject matter, dead bodies and scary content, this is not a film for kids. Ultimately, for me, it’s a cheesy, fairly clean, and only moderately enjoyable horror film.

Violence: Moderate to heavy / Profanity: Moderate—“G*d d*mn” (1), “Jesus” (3), “Oh G*d” (6), OMG (4), “damn” (2), s-words (3) / Sex/Nudity: Minor

See list of Relevant Issues—questions-and-answers.