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Detective Ha
(Shu Qi) is trying to solve a rape/murder
case but hasn't got a whole lot to go on. She heads out
to the forest where the girls were found killed to
investigate and quickly realizes that there's something
mysterious about this forest. She gets in touch with
Steven who has written a thesis that plants are
sentient creatures. Could the trees be the answer to
this case, or is there something even more absurd
lurking in the deep forest?
So let me just warn you, the posters you've seen for
this movie are all a lie more or less. You're probably
thinking that this movie is either about some creepy
ghost girl roaming around in the bushes or about giant
trees killing people. No? Well that's what I thought.
But to tell you the truth, Forest of Death is barely
even a horror flick. Danny Pang's latest movie (gee,
are the Pang brothers puking out a new movie every
weekend these days or what?) is in fact more of a
mystery-crime-thriller with a slight hint of horror
in it - but not nearly enough to make it a horror movie.
The story revolves around a female detective (Shu Qi)
who's trying to solve a rape/murder case but is quite
unsuccessful at that. All of the crimes have occurred
in a forest which is also a popular place to commit
suicide for some reason. Could the two be connected?
Hmm, I wonder. She meets Steven, a biologist who
believes that plants are sentient creatures (kind of
far-fetched, yes) and together they try to solve the
puzzle. When the movie was finally over, I thought to
myself "well, this wasn't so bad", but then I remembered
that Danny Pang had directed this, and as we all know
by now, the Pang brothers usually make two completely
different movies within one movie (this can be seen in
both The Eye and Ab-normal Beauty).
For most of the time, this works for the Pang brothers,
but as of lately, they have started to produce less
impressive horror movies and unfortunately, Forest of
Death might just be one of Danny Pang's worst movies
to date. See, while the first hour was decent and had
a lot of potential (there were some genuinely creepy
scenes in there), the final half-hour was just horrible.
He really should've just left the forest being mysterious
rather than explain it with an over-the-top ending that
didn't make much sense at all.
Another problem that this movie has is the fact that
we never got to know any of the characters, they're all
pretty flat and Shu Qi really didn't impress me. This
was overall a pretty disappointing experience to be
honest with you. With a misleading title and an even
more misleading marketing campaign, I'm sure many of
you will be even more disappointed in this movie than
I was, so I'll probably have to recommend that you stay
away from this movie. Come on Danny Pang, get your
brother and spend at least a year writing your next
script because the quality is more important than the
quantity at this stage.
Not much.
Generic stuff, felt like some of it was borrowed from
The Eye (which had a great soundtrack, but it didn't
come through as great here).
Disappointing mystery-thriller from Danny Pang, perhaps
he's simply not ready to go solo yet, or perhaps he
should have spent some more time on developing the
script because this movie did have tons of potential.
The first hour is decent but the final half hour is
just terrible. Don't waste your time.
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