If you promise me an apocalypse, I will watch your movie so it should not be a surprise that I was intrigued with the premise of Into The Forest. There is an unexplained electrical outage, which may be local, statewide, national or global. Into The Forest focuses on the effect of this outage on one family, primarily two sisters played by Evan Rachel Wood and Ellen Page, who also produced the film.
When Into The Forest begins, the sisters are highly focused on their individual ambitions, and the film examines how their personalities, relationship and hopes have to change to adapt to the dramatic change in their life. Into The Forest takes place in the near future complete with projected holograms that give heavy-handed foreboding information in the beginning of the film, but because of the premise, the audience does not get an opportunity to explore the trappings of this world.
Into The Forest has deliberate pacing, which is a fancy way of saying that it is slow. I don’t need action, but I did not fully understand enough about the fundamentals of each character to completely appreciate if there were dramatic changes. Wood’s character is reflected through her obsessive dancing and relationship with her body, but Page’s character was more of a mystery. Is she usually the responsible one (they both seem pretty disciplined) or did she step up? What was Page’s character studying for? I assume medical school or just pre med. Then later on, she becomes a lot less cautious.
While the characters’ emotional frustration and ensuing friction felt genuine, I was obsessed with the practical aspects of survival in this world. The characters do a lot of stupid things. Why are you pulling over at night? If you had little to no gas, would you use a chainsaw? A major character dies within 10 days of the outage. 10 days! To be fair, maybe that is accurate, and I would be lucky to survive 10 days without electricity. I hope to never find out, but things go crap a little too quickly. There is one character that practically has a sign saying, “Don’t trust me! I’m bad!”
Is there a name for a genre where two sisters are put in jeopardy? While I was watching Into The Forest, I remembered Viral and The Keeping Room. There are similar situations and themes explored in these films. Into The Forest is the best of the three, but if I am being uncharitable, it is plodding, but if I am being charitable, Into The Forest is a meditative exploration of human nature in a time of crisis. I would only recommend Into The Forest to people who are fans of the cast, but it is definitely not a must see.
Side note: I was so excited to see Callum Keith Rennie, whom I last saw in Battlestar Galatica, but I need to see him more often.