After finding a strange box in a friend's house, a woman and her sister learn that they've become embroiled in a frantic search to unravel the mystery surrounding a local forest rumored to be cursed with the spirits of numerous visitors that have committed suicide in the area and must try to stop it.
There's quite a lot to like with this one. The film is at its best in detailing the great atmosphere of the forest in addition to the main central mystery surrounding the titular area of the country. There's a lot of folklore given about the use of the forest as a popular site for suicides and strange deaths which serves to entice the girl rather easily into investigating which provides an excuse to investigate the cursed area and uncover the mystery about why it's haunted. This investigation not only uncovers the dark secret of the forests' history with the use of the cursed box and its meaning but also the family legacy of mental illness that crops up. With this section also leading into the backstory of the village and how it got cursed, this all has a lot to like about it, and on top of that, these scenes manage to generate some decent jump-scares including the cursed video call with her friends or the visit to the hospital to visit an injured friend that helps to influence more of the storyline while also giving those jump scenes with the ghosts. As well, the film manages to follow this up with an array of impressive and chilling haunting scenes. The opening video of the Youtube star going through the forest on a Livestream with her fans offers up some startling imagery with the forest seemingly coming to life to attack her live on camera. The later scene where the girls and their friends manage to find the cursed box only to be met with tragedy moments later contains a similarly startling sequence that comes off rather well. A trip through the woods with the group where she's attacked by malevolent trees yet no one is aware of it through the circumstances involved in rescuing a trapped friend likewise has some freaky visuals present, and a later sequence with a crying baby wailing in the distance keeps up the eerieness of the scene. That becomes a prominent aspect throughout the second half of the film where it's focused more on quick chilling setpieces or visuals to denote the curse has taken hold as the environment around the character comes to life in chilling means. The frantic finale, offering all sorts of fun scenes from the group of hikers encountering the deformed bodies left behind, the visions of what happened to the original villagers that started the curse, and the final confrontation with the spirits of the forest all come together to provide plenty of likable aspects here. While there's a lot to like, this one does have some minor issues. The biggest factor involved in the film is the sluggish and drawn-out pacing which offers up several scenes that don't need to be there. A trip to the hospital that centers around the main girl being treated for schizophrenia and other mental issues that sidelines her as the lead character in favor of her sister could've provided something had it been used for anything other than baseless psychological jargon attempting to explain the medical condition plaguing her. Since this section requires her to be under lockup for the duration of the study, switching characters to the less expressive and just generally lifeless sister does the film no favors by bringing her into the forefront rather than the side character she was before. Another factor for the dragged-out pace is the need for several flashbacks explaining the cursed forest and how it came to be known in the present day. A single retelling of the legend involving the locals tormenting and killing the undesirable ones and causing the curse to come into play would've made more sense than stopping the pace three different times to reveal more of it, especially if the only thing the later reveals add to the folklore is more gruesome gore in the tortures shown to be afflicted upon others. With these aspects making the film far longer than it needs to be, they're enough to knock this one down despite the positive features here.
Rated Unrated/R: Graphic Violence and Language.
