For the Trees: Zada’s Moody Locale Squandered by Feeble Narrative

We’ve come to expect studios to unbosom their less desirable horror trinkets during the dawning of every new year, and the annual tradition is alive and well with the equivocally titled The Forest from first time director Jason Zada. On a positive note, it’s a return to more traditional formatting, a move away from the found footage items we usually find released in this quarter (The Devil Inside; Devil’s Due), and it’s also not a remake or a dubious sequel (The Last Exorcism Part II). But Zada’s film is the second English language film revealed over the past year to waste its singularly spooky locale, Japan’s Aokigahara Forest at the base of Mt. Fuji (the first being Gus Van Sant’s Cannes blooper, Sea of Trees, which may explain this horror film’s...