THE FOREST

1981/18/79m

A.k.a. Don’t Go in the Woods 2

“If you go down to the woods today… You might never get out alive!”

Director: Don Jones / Writer: Evan Jones / Cast: Dean Russell, Elaine Warner, John Batis, Ann Wilkinson, Michael Brody, Jeannette Kelly, Corky Pigeon, Becki Burke.

Body Count: 7

Dire-logue: “I don’t know about splitting up, it’s usually not a good idea.”

It rarely gets worse than this bizarro and painfully dull Californian campers-in-peril flick – like there weren’t enough of them in 1981?

Two couples, who both drive horrible brown cars, venture into the wilderness and become the target of a cannibalistic loon who is haunted by the perky ghosts of his dead children. They, in turn, are haunted by the ghost of their abusive mother, who Daddy killed before losing it.

Elements of The Shining inexplicably creep into the otherwise sub-standard opus, as the ghost-kiddies help the heroine find her missing husband and save the day. But neither she, the kids, the killer, or anyone else in the entire film registers a modicum of empathy as they deliver over dramatic lines for trivial situations and under dramatic responses to fucking ghosts!

Pay attention to the jazzy sax music that plays during one of the murders, where the victim fights the killer with half of a bicycle (!) and the lyrics to an early song: “There’s nothing to fear… people do disappear in the dark side of the foreeeeest.”

If The Forest must teach us anything, it’s that… that… Aw, hell, it can’t teach us jack.