Mjeteconer Just perfect...

Megamind To all those who have watched it: I hope you enjoyed it as much as I do.

Nayan Gough A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

Rexanne It’s sentimental, ridiculously long and only occasionally funny

kcott44 I've been collecting 80's slasher films recently and I got my hand on a copy of the Code Red DVD release of The Forest, a little known and not very liked 80's supernatural slasher film. The Forest is pretty interesting for your typical slasher fare, it revolves around a group of hikers, adults mind you are hunted by a cannibal hermit in the woods who is haunted by the spirits of his dead wife and kids. It gets a poor 3.5 on here which is the same of Don't Go in the Woods...Alone! and I will say The Forest is a better film. Now, let's get down to the usual criticisms here. The acting is atrocious, the best acting in the film is by Gary Kent who plays the cannibal hermit and he's really not that good either but he's given somewhat solid character development for his character and he is not annoying which is more than I can say for a lot of slashers. The directing is about average for slashers, nothing special but I do like the setting and I think it's captured decently here. The body count is low, but this film is not about the body count, more about the story instead. The score I actually didn't mind, there's song which is horrendously funny but the score itself, isn't that bad, in fact, I liked the score they used for the opening kills. My two favorite scenes are the opening with the two kills and the flashback sequence though poorly acted by everybody but Kent, gives us decent character development and while cheesy, actually makes us sympathize with the killer.The Forest is not a good film by any means and I paid quite a bit for the DVD but it's a solid DVD and I liked the film more than I thought I would. Recommended to slasher fans who want something a little different than just the killer in the woods formula.

Scarecrow-88 A truly disturbed, cannibalistic psychopath, John(Gary Kent, under the pseudonym Michael Brody) who lives in a cave, stalks campers who make the unfortunate mistake of backpacking in his wilderness. Steve(Dean Russell)and his buddy Charlie(John Batis)get into a playful argument with their wives, Sharon(Tomi Barrett, the late real-life wife of Gary Kent))& Teddi(Ann Wilkinson)over surviving in the woods camping by themselves. To prove a point, the gals decide to head for the wilderness out of Los Angeles for a camping trip disturbing their partners to the point that they soon follow afterward. Falling prey to John, Teddi is soon killed as Sharon runs for her life as the men arrive late to the wilderness due to their truck's overheating. Afraid, tired, and paranoid, Sharon receives some very unusual assistance..John's ghost children! That's right, John's children remain in the wilderness, ghostly apparitions which spy on those who exist in the woods, taking a special liking to Sharon, helping guide her to safety and her friends. Meanwhile, Steve and Charlie soon find shelter from a down pour and the darkness of night in the very cave where John lives. Cooking over a burning fire, the meat simmering is actually from Charlie's wife, Teddi! Unknowingly Charlie eats from the meat when offered by John who finds the outsiders inside his dwelling place! Anyway, soon, worried about their wives, Steve and Charlie set out to find them as morning breaks. Meanwhile, John goes a hunting, with Charlie, Steve, and Sharon in a fight for survival. When Steve suffers a compound fracture stumbling between two massive rocks over a flowing river, he will be handicapped only increasing such an already nightmare scenario, with Sharon following her ghostly young friends to potential safety..they even, at one point, plead with their father to not kill her. Charlie, unfortunately, doesn't have such friends.Director Donald Jones(..who also wrote it and went broke funding the film)smartly shoots the film in such a breathtaking, gorgeous location in the Sequoia National Park, in California, where those gargantuan trees tower to great heights, and I basically watch backwoods slashers for this very purpose. For some strange reason, I didn't particularly find Jones' direction of the setting very atmospheric..the dread was missing, although there are some rather disturbing attacks by John using his knife(..shot in a clever way, Jones' camera suggests more than what is actually on screen, yet, somehow, still achieves that gasp at what John is doing to victims). Within such a picturesque landscape, to see innocents preyed upon by a maniac, that kind of increases the terror. City folk attempting to spend a nice few days in a different place, to smell the clean, fresh air, enjoy the sights of a lovely view, only to find themselves stalked by a creepy predator with a very intimidating knife. Providing the back-story to why John is the monster he is, Jones allows us to witness his memory flashback in discovering his wife's adultery and reacting accordingly(..she is also a ghost in the wilderness looking for her children, wishing to punish them for "being naughty")killing both her and the lover in bed(..a refrigerator repairman). The children, sad and depressed committed suicide and now "haunt" the wilderness, still interacting with their pa or whoever they so choose. I realize such a novelty as ghost children in a backwoods slasher is unique and appreciated by some, but I found the idea rather hokey and too silly to take serious. They do help our heroine escape a few potentially dangerous situations, but it was awfully hard for me to keep from giggling uncontrollably. The music I found hideously 80's and the performances aren't mind-blowing. I mean I could react to the situation they were in, because it is indeed quite terrifying to find yourselves in an unfamiliar and hostile territory being hunted by someone who knows the area so well. I think the film is similar in many ways to DON'T GO INTO THE WOODS..ALONE!, except that THE FOREST has the aforementioned ghost children(..their voices echo when talking to Sharon, their father, or each other). Gary Kent looks like a filthy George Lucas, with tattered clothes, and humanity lost. As I mentioned above, the violence isn't as grisly as what is suggested because director Jones is able to effectively cut away from a great deal of knife penetration, yet the way he stages the set pieces leave you rather unsettled(..such as Teddi's murder, the violence mostly silhouetted on the surface of a nearby huge stone formation, her pleas for John to stop and, once stabbed several times, attempts to crawl away from her predator only to be finished off;a hanging corpse John is skinning). I've seen better and worse of this type of slasher film, it's rather mediocre, at best, with some effectively shot scenery. I don't really think it's particularly memorable, for the exception of the ghost children.

Michael_Elliott Forest, The (1982) * 1/2 (out of 4) Yet another rip off of Friday the 13th, although this one here tries to be somewhat different by adding a ghost aspect. Two couples plan on going camping but the wives go one way while the husbands go the other way. Soon a hermit is stalking them because he needs something to eat. This film was shot for under $40,000 and it's easy to see on the screen. The acting is fair to say the least and the special effects are really poor but the direction isn't too bad. There are a couple good chase scenes but this hardly make the film worth watching. The subplot with the hermits ghost children is interesting but it really doesn't add too much. The film has a couple good moments but even at 85-minutes it's hard to sit through.

slayrrr666 "The Forest" is a decent enough entry, if only for a few really interesting moments.**SPOILERS**Trying to relax, Steve, (Dean Russell) and Charlie, (John Batis) suggest a camping trip in the woods, which their wives Sharon, (Tomi Barrett) and Teddi, (Ann Wilkinson) want to get in on. When they get their first, they quickly begin to realize that something is wrong with the situation and try to leave. As the men arrive, they find the camping area completely abandoned and the women nowhere around. Stumbling upon loner John, (Gary Kent) who reveals that he has been living in the area for years after witnessing his wife cheating on him, it quickly dawns on them that he has been terrorizing the area and is responsible for their disappearance. Along with his two ghost children, he chases after them while they attempt to get out of the woods with the survivors of his attacks.The Good News: This one does have a few pretty good moments in it to keep it afloat. One of the best is it's complete eschewing of slasher conventions to make something similar without really distancing itself from it's target. The victims, not the typical horny teenagers, are not relentlessly stalked by a remorseless killer whose reason for killing is a total mystery. Here, we have a murderer whose reasons are clearly laid out and understandable, even if it doesn't make sense to anyone else. Additionally, he only kills out of necessity, not because he's deriving some type of pleasure. Those are two really surprising features that are quite unexpected. There's even no spring-loaded cats or other false scares. In fact, there really are no sudden jump scares in the entire film. There are some fun segments to be had from the chasing, which do get somewhat fun. The chase by the river that soon includes a dip through the icy water. The later chase at the end isn't half bad, and it opens with a really nice one through the woods that includes a few really nice moments and ends with a big bang. The last big positive is that this one has an incredible story to it. This one has a very logical reason for staying in such a dangerous situation while most would've left the area long before being put into danger. First, the two women arrive in the woods long before the others on their own camping trip and manage to become lost as the men arrive, delayed with car problems. Finally making it to the campsite, they discover their wives are missing and thus must stick around to investigate. This splitting up allows them all to be menaced by the killer but still provide a reason why they don't all immediately take off back to civilization. The lack of a single teenager in here, especially from the time period, is also nice. That helps this one be more believable and terrifying. One would expect a group of inexperienced teens to get themselves in trouble by lacking the experience or wisdom to make the best decisions under the circumstances, whereas adults would be expected to extricate themselves from bad situations with little or no help. Seeing them at the mercy of the land, as well as the killer, reminds viewers that they might find themselves in just such a situation. These more believable reasons for the characters to willingly remain in a dangerous area is a welcome change of pace, and are part of the reason why this one is at worse watchable.The Bad News: This one here does have a couple of really big flaws that are kinda hard to get over. The fact that this one really doesn't offer up much in the way of blood or gore is a big factor, especially once the cannibal overtones get thrown around. Seeing a victim strung up ready to be consumed doesn't do that, and some off-color blood splotches is little better. The gore here isn't convincing, when it gets around to showing it as nearly all of the kills are done more through implication rather than actively doing anything that might suggest a violent, brutal end. That very few are done on-screen is a big one, especially when it gets around to showing them. The very low body-count here is what really hurts that factor, since there isn't much of an opportunity to really let loose, even though the ones that are shown could've been much more brutal or even shown on-screen at the very least. There's also a problem with the back-story. A member mentions early on that the camping area to which they are going is so secluded that very few people even know about it, that they can expect to be all alone out there. If the area is that far off the beaten track and that few people frequent the area, how is the killer even staying alive? There shouldn't be enough passers-by to require sole sustenance on human flesh, yet there's enough kills each year to do so, requiring that others should know about it and meaning that there should've been more to keep visitors safe, since it's mentioned in passing about the disappearances yet nothing else is done. There's a couple of other weird little flaws in here, but none will matter as much as those.The Final Verdict: While not a complete waste, this one doesn't offer up much and really only has a couple of good points for it. This is really only for those who enjoy the backwoods slasher genre, while those who expect more high-brow horror or figure that the flaws are too much won't have a fun time with this one.Rated R: Violence and Language