I watched THE FOREST with great expectations and this is my verdict: Gigantic cast meets not so gigantic story.
Or, better: The story is about a family – a man, his wife and two children – breaking apart over a camping trip and the picture would have been perfect without the pathetic plastic monster. Having the monster exist only in the family father’s (played by Stephen Moyer) mind would have worked very well indeed.
I wonder why Moyer as a co-producer couldn’t throw in his influence to turn the film into a psycho-thriller. He does see it as such, he says so in his first comment in the specials section.
Anyhow – THE FOREST still is a must see for anybody who knows Mr. Moyer from the HBO TV series TrueBlood and the film RESTRAINT: The guy can play all levels of crazy.
Available only as DVD/BluRay. Filmed in 2011 the picture was shown in one theatre only (on request of avid Stephen Moyer fans) and was released end of November 2012 as THE BARRENS in the USA. Since February 2013 it’s available also in Europe (France): End January/begin February 2013 it was screened out of competition in the Festival du Film Fantastique de Gérardmer .
Big drawback – it costs 38 EUR to buy the BluRay at amazon.fr – and then you can’t even turn off the French subtitles in the original version. Gah!
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