Up and Coming Weekly is a weekly publication in Fayetteville, NC and Fort Bragg, NC area offering local news, views, arts, entertainment and community event and business information.
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20 UCW FEBRUARY 3-9, 2016 WWW.UPANDCOMINGWEEKLY.COM Before I begin my review of The Forest (93 minutes), shout- out to the guy who had clearly been dragged into the theater against his will. During the first slightly scary sequence, featuring a girl in a tent with a CGI face, he immediately leapt to his feet and hurried from the theater, muttering "Oh Hell No" underneath his breath as he left. Shame on his friends who spent some time laughing at him before fetching him back and forcing him to return to his seat, though, to be fair, his departure was easily the most entertaining thing about the movie. The film opens with Sara Price (Natalie Dormer) receiving a call from Japan, informing her that her twin sister, Jess (also Natalie Dormer) has wandered off into the Suicide Forest and they don't plan to look for her because only suicidal people ever get lost in the suicide forest. That seems a bit cavalier, and I really must ask some actual Japanese people if the local law enforcement have a policy of walking past people threatening to jump off roofs or if their non-intervention plan only applies to the Suicide Forest. Anyway, since Sara is independently wealthy, she immediately takes off from whatever job it is that she does and flies to Japan. As is traditional with American tourists, she makes zero effort to learn even basic Japanese phrases, instead choosing to assume that everyone she meets will happily converse with her in English. Her first stop is the school where her sister worked. As she walks through the door, the students immediately scream and panic, because all Japanese schoolgirls believe in ghosts and they had no idea that their teacher was a twin. A quick history lesson with the head of the school and one of the screaming schoolchildren sends Sara towards Mount Fuji via train. Using her superpower of instinctively knowing where everything important is, despite having no maps or prior knowledge of Japan, she walks directly to the one building in the whole area where they store the dead bodies of people who were found after committing suicide in the forest. It is a pretty small building. She immediately starts spewing English at a clerk of some kind, who helpfully tells her that her sister was found. Before Sara can get too excited, the clerk leads her downstairs to what is presumably the Mount Fuji Morgue, an unsecured, unrefrigerated room in the basement. Then the clerk helpfully indicates which dead body is Sara's sister, before telling Sara not to touch anything and leaving the room. As you might surmise, Sara ignores her instructions and sneaks a peak at the dead, desiccated corpse. Note that the corpse is pretty decayed for being so recently dead, and thus it bears almost no resemblance to Sara's twin sister. Oh, and according to the clerk the dead bodies spend all night "screaming" if they are left alone. If you need a job in the Mount Fuji area, I'm guessing the Mount Fuji Morgue is always hiring. In any case, Sara leaves the building and has a quick chat with a local, who may or may not be the ghost of the suicide victim, since she is wearing a huge grin while telling Sara about all the people who die in the forest. Eventually, Sara finds someone else who speaks English and convinces him to help find her sister. It does not end well. Overall, it wasn't bad, exactly. It was generic. There was little to distinguish it from any other obscure horror movie from the last ten years, the acting was subpar, the scares completely standardized, and everything about the film reads as an American remake of J-Horror — even though it is not actually a remake. Genre fans will be entertained, but I'm going to save my enthusiasm for The Boy, because anthropomorphic dolls are creepier than ghosts in a suicide forest. Now showing at Patriot 14 + IMAX. Look Out for Gh-gh-ghosts The Forest by HEATHER GRIFFITHS HEATHER GRIFFITHS, Contributing Writer. COMMENTS? Editor@ upandcomingweekly.com. 910.484.6200. J. Wayne Riggins, OD, MD, Sheel Patel, MD, Raz Penmatcha, MD, Cynthia Toth, MD Lejla Vajzovic, MD, Shelby Stephenson, MD, Edward Kenshock Jr, OD John Krempecki, OD, Duy Lam, OD Cape Fear Eye Doctors are honored among the best doctors in America in LASIK, Retina & Cornea Eye Care for The Aging Eye FREE Seminar Join us Thursday, February 25 th 6:00 to 7:00 pm as Dr. Raz Penmatcha presents… Eye Care for The Aging Eye Seminar will be held at our Owen Drive Location Classroom at 1629 Owen Drive Fayetteville, NC RSVP today at 910-484-2284 (ext 269) or register online at www.CapeFearEye.com Raz Penmatcha, MD Refreshments served!