Movie Review: Forest of Death

The title alone should clue you as to the quality of this film. To put it bluntly: it's not scary and it's dumb. That's basically it.

I also didn't care for any of the characters, and they didn't give me any reasons to like them. The guy who believes that plants talk to each other (which they do, btw) has a career-obsessed/self-obsessed TV reporter girlfriend who uses her boyfriend to get headlines. I know what you're thinking: how can having a botanist boyfriend help a reporter get juicy stories? Well, let me tell you. You see, there's this forest, and in this forest many people go to commit suicide. It's famous for it. Because if you're going to kill yourself, why not a heavily wooded area, right? And in this nice patch of suicide land, some people (most who were going to kill themselves) reported seeing ghosts, and fog. Fog. I'm scared! So girlfriend likes to propel the idea that there are ghosts around.

But the real reason girlfriend uses her boyfriend is because a girl (the Prime Minister's daughter, which I didn't know until I read a synopsis elsewhere. Maybe I wasn't paying attention to the subtitles enough?) was raped and murdered in this forest of death, and a female detective wants Mr. Plant to use his plant-communicating abilities to help her nab the guy who did it. And, uh, it works. But he won't help his girlfriend out, and her career starts going to hell.

I'm a tad confused about the characterization here. At first, we're meant to dislike her, because she obviously puts herself and her career before anyone else, and I wondered how a man like him could be so stupid as to be with a woman like her. This automatically gave him a drastic loss in points. But I figured he was just in it for the sex. More loss of points. But then we're supposed to feel sorry for girlfriend. Her job is dying, and there are whispers that Mr. Plant is seeing the detective behind her back (he isn't, as far as I can tell), and all of a sudden she actually seems to care and show...emotion. Weird. And by the end they seem to be in love. It didn't gel with me, but I didn't like any of them, so to say I cared would be a lie.

To repeat: not scary, so if you want a scary movie, this isn't it. The whole forest thing was silly, too, and the music made me laugh at least once. Using music to tell the audience that something worrisome is happening or about to happen is unnecessary, and in this case laugh-inducing.

My grade: D