“825 Forest Road” (2025) is set in Ashland Falls, Pennsylvania. That town suffers from a rash of suicides and mysterious disappearances. The alleged cause is a long dead woman named Helen Foster, (Diomira Keane) who allegedly lived at the titular address. If someone could locate her home and burn it down, she can be stopped. Of course, music teacher, Chuck Wilson (Joe Falcone), his wife, Maria (Elizabeth Vermilyea), and his sister, Isabelle (Kathryn Miller), do not find out about the problem that plagues their new neighborhood until it is too late. Are they next?
“825 Forest Road” is divided into four chapters: Chuck, Isabelle, Maria and the address. The narrative structure builds up the mythology with unbridgeable gaps between each story because of the family’s relationship flaws and communication issues. The audience knows more than the characters because they can see how all the pieces fit, but once it comes together, it still feels like a piece is missing. Chuck left home and never looked back. Isabelle, an artist going to the local college, still resents the estrangement and is struggling with her own trauma, which is totally fair. It is implied and explicitly referenced in the denouement that Isabelle may have some special powers, but the story does nothing with this part of her. Maria has her own bag of rocks, which initially protects her from seeing the spectre, but once she alters her routine, she becomes the most vulnerable.
“825 Forest Road” seems to intertwine Helen with the siblings’ mother, who could have been abusive or just a normal mother fed up that her kids were not doing their chores. Interestingly, Helen taunts Maria with their mother’s familiar disciplinarian techniques, which is annoying, but does not resonate as much as it would if it was levied at the brother or sister. If the film has a problem, the plethora and variety of Helen’s disturbances are stirring, but when the denouement arrives, it feels conventional and expected as opposed to the steps leading up to the grand finale. The vengeful ghost is just manipulating them with their mother’s memories, but it was a missed opportunity to link the two figures in a more substantive way that functioned on multiple levels rather than just weakening the living. There are other loose threads such as the significance of Chuck’s attraction to a church when he is supposed to be evacuating a building.
When Helen’s story is revealed, it does not add texture to the family’s story. The best horror usually settles on an overarching theme that ties everything together, but Helen’s story feels separate. There is the idea of an inactive town which does nothing to prevent threats, which is occurring years later in the way that they cope with her, but do not stop her. This theory is more of a reach since the town recedes into the background of the story with each successive chapter.
“825 Forest Road” is at its best when the town treats the haunting like a tornado alert. Even though the acting is a bit stiff, intertwining a neighbor’s warning, a night on the town for the ghost, a townie college friend’s wariness, a stack of library books and found footage elements made the story riveting. It made the movie feel as if it was a take on an old school Stephen King work like “Storm of the Century” (1999) or “It: Chapter One” (2017). There is an analogy with Isabel’s painting and Chuck’s music, but it is another stick in the pile that never gets woven into a basket. Unfortunately when the broader impact gets abandoned, the movie suffers for it. When it focuses on the family, the narrative loses momentum, which may be the point. They are not a family so unlike the town, they cannot come together to protect each other from an unknown force.
The point of the story is that Chuck got them into this mess with all his guilt and his reasonable guy schtick pretending to be above the psychological problems of mere mortals. He destabilizes Maria’s successful business with the move. Instead of recognizing that her mental health depends on having a thriving life outside of him and his family, he attributes it to taking pills He scoffs at the idea that his sister needs therapy. As a piano teacher, he expresses a desire to keep his students small so he can teach them. He does not immediately present as a jerk, but when the math adds up, he is definitely awful. Chuck knows the most about Helen but does nothing to warn his family about the signs. He even gaslights Maria when she has a run in and blames Isabel for strange shenanigans. He also passive aggressively tries to bait Maria into a fight about leaving the city (which city—there are two major cities in Pennsylvania). Chuck is the worst. There is the idea that Helen could be an infection, another concept that kind of drops off. He is patient zero. The lesson: get therapy, prioritize your wife and do not ignore your sister if your mom sucks, which their mother may not have, but Helen is exploiting the ambiguity of imprecise writing.
Isabel comes in second and takes after her brother because she sucks people into the drama who were safe before they met her. Luke (Darin F. Earl II), a friend from college, is Black and thus knows to stay away from this nonsense, but he keeps ignoring his instincts and helping her. Maria often tries to throw a lifeline to Isabel, but if Isabel was on the Titanic, she would be Rose, and she is not there for Maria when she needs her the most. To be clear, anyone may react similarly, but Maria deserved better. She got stuck with the wrong family.
Maria’s chapter is the best one because she is the most relatable person, and she talks to people outside of Ashland Falls, her employee, Arlen (actor unlisted), her sister Ally (Deirdre Koczur), and all her fans who enjoy watching her online broadcast, “Threadin the Needle with Maria.” She has a mannequin dubbed Martha that would not be creepy if Helen did not resemble it and seems to take it for a joyride. No one tells Maria what’s up in the neighborhood or home, but her fans and sister have her back. Don’t be Maria holding it down for people who don’t have your back!
If “825 Forest Road” is slightly problematic, it suggests that any type of mental health problem could make someone more vulnerable to Helen, but it remedies that theory by showing anyone can get it. If you do not like merciless bleak endings, stay away, but do not worry. The material is not graphic, and for true horror fans, the visuals are more atmospheric than disturbing.
Throw a black dress on a woman, and you have a horror movie. People who do not like “The Woman in the Yard” (2025) will prefer something more conventional like “825 Forest Road,” and vice versa. Like the house, the story has good bones, but it feels like an extended episode of a horror anthology series or a television movie (it is straight to streaming) than a movie that could stand tall on the big screen. If more time was spent tying together the different elements of the story, it could have worked, but they never blended. Also demerit for giving in to conventional tropes and putting red shirts on the most obvious characters.
