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.

Overall Forest of Death was a solid indie horror film. It had good cinematography, music, makeup, acting, etcetera. I just thought it was well done overall. Though, with any movie there were downsides. I thought that there was too much "downtime" with nothing really happening, just music montage-type scenes. One scene would have been fine, but it just seemed like a filer. I also wish we saw more of the monster's true form, we are given brief glimpses of it, and it looks great, but I just wish there was more of it. Other than that, I enjoyed it and can't wait for the release of their next project.

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.

I can only hope my $5 rental was the only copy available and no other human will have to ever see this (this would be a better plot than this movie, even as a sequel to The Ring). Clearly I was the only one who actually watched it because there's a bunch of reviews insinuating it's watchable and not a complete hot pile of garbage. The actors all say the lines like they're reading them for the first time and have no idea what is going on. The one exception is the southern hillbilly redneck moonshiner (they couldn't decide on a stereotype), he was actually good. When the budget is so low you have to make a fake deck of cards out of printer paper, just don't make the movie.