Forest of Death

If I could give it negative stars I would. This was horrible. Horrible characters, horrible acting, horrible timing, horrible pacing, horrible dialogue, horrible decisions made by the horrible characters. I'm so annoyed I watched it all the way through.

If I ever see the name Brendan Rudnicki on a movie again I'll know to stay far, far away. Don't even bother with this nonsense. By the end I was telling every one of them that they deserved what they got. To me, it's not exactly a good sign if you're rooting for every single character to die by the end of a movie so it will just end and the torment will be over. Cannot recommend even a little.

Forest of Death is a no budget 'horror' about four teens being stalked by a shapeshifter in the woods. So, what to say? A cast of ameteurs monotone their way through a script that needs no fewer then 3 party montages to help pad the run time. The monster, which kills ruthlessly during the opening teaser, takes forever to do anything for the rest of the movie. I can only assume the high reviews come from family and friends of the cast and crew because Forest of Death fails to work on any level. To defend a film like this by saying it's a low budget movie ignores the fact that The Blair Witch Project was also a low budget movie that was roughly 1000% more effective then weak piece of noise.

There's indie films, and then there's whatever this is. I've googled DBS Films and I'm aware of how they operate. You'd think the whole "casting your fans" for EVERY ROLE is a bit of a misstep, but they keep doing it and it has not worked and it will probably never work. The writing is 3rd grade level and the acting is somehow worse than Tommy Wiseau's "The Room" but it isn't even bad in a funny way, it's just bad. The most remarkable part of this movie is that Amazon allowed them to price it at $5, which is $5 too much. Do yourself a favor and listen to me: Save your time, save your money, the correct rating for this movie is 1/10, not the absurd high rating it currently has.

Forest of Death has to be one of the better films DBS has produced. Something about the cinematography was my favorite part of the movie. The setting of the film looked beautiful. The acting was decent; some lines were clunky so the delivery could have been better. But that didn't take away from the story. You may have seen the story before but you should still watch it. It's always fun to see new takes on stories you know. And this film wasn't a bad take at all. There were some moments when the editing seemed a bit weird, but they happened so fast I don't believe most people will catch it. The movie is just barely longer than an hour, and what else are you going to be doing with your time? If you don't mind B movies supporting new actors, writers, and hell film studios, please check this out-a good watch.

Clearly the majority of these reviews are planted by people involved with DBS Films. How do I know this? Because they keep mentioning DBS Films. Unless it's Blumhouse or A24, most people don't know what production company made what they just watched. Yet 75% of the rave reviews mention DBS Films. (They also mention "good acting" and "fast-paced", and neither of those things are in evidence.) DBS Films is "fan-driven", which means a whole bunch of people who have no concept of how to make horror films are treated as "quality monitors" in the process of making these films. Because these people are given a little "ownership" of these generic projects - oh, the number of films they have done with "Forest" or "Haunting" in the title! - they feel they have a stake in its outcome, which causes them to rush to sites like this to gush over whatever dreck they "made happen". What is this supposed to accomplish? Will horror fans see a garbage movie and be fooled by these reviews? Of course not. The only things these reviews have done is make this horror fan remember the name DBS Films so I know to never watch one of their amateurish movies again.