Emily is in a abusive relationship with her boyfriend Peter. Her best friends Michelle, Jolene, and Francine plan a camping trip and she sneaks off with them for the weekend. Peter is furious and searches the woods for his girlfriend, killing anyone who stands in his way.
Written and Directed by: Roger Boyer
Starring:
Laurel McArther – Emily
Veronica Ternopolski – Michelle
Jalin Desloges – Francine
Weronika Sokalska – Jolene
Graham Silver – Henry
Jesse Laing – Franky
Alyssa Wyspianski – Sally
Genevieve DeGraves – Kim
Stefanie Austin – Alice
Corey Chadwick Malone – Anthony
Matthew Stefanson – Roy
Trevor Kristjanson – Jake
Dennis Scullard – Peter
Flat out have to say that Dark Forest is a very enjoyable slasher film. Why? It went back to the basics of classic 80’s slashers that are still popular to this day. The 80’s style is complimented by James Hofer’s synthesizer music. The film didn’t focus on twists and turns, or making the slasher’s effects scary to give you nightmares, or over the top characters that you hate and want to be killed. It was rather a simple story with characters that were all likeable and without any true main characters, you don’t know who will survive if anyone. The scariest part is the kills came across realistic, almost too realistic!
From the beginning, the tone is playful and goofy especially between Jolene (Weronika Sokalska) and Francine (Jalin Desloges). The only non fun character is Emily’s (Laurel McArthur) abusive, controlling, psychotic boyfriend Peter (Dennis Scullard).
When the girls plan their getaway weekend, Emily has to decline due to Peter not allowing her to go. Her friends are furious with Peter, especially Michelle (Veronica Ternopolski). The day before the trip Michelle has it out with Peter and they drop nasty insults and name calling at each other. After that run in, Peter gives Emily a stern warning about going on the trip. Once he’s passed out she sneaks out and goes on the trip despite his threats. The trip is going well as the girls share fun stories around the campfire. Oh, and there’s two other couples camping in the vicinity….you know a slasher film can always use more victims. While hanging out at the campfire, the girls conversations are real life and they usually disclose some personal information about one of them and done with intriguing dialogue. It’s just one of the many indications of a well written script. At this point, even if it wasn’t a slasher film, it’s a fun college girls on a bonding camping trip. The slasher addition just makes it much more entertaining.
Meanwhile, Peter and two of his friends Jake (Trevor Kristjanson) and Roy (Matthew Stefanson) are doing what they do best, hang out drinking and ripping on girls. Jake and Roy’s slacker lifestyle does make for some comedic moments though. As the three sit there, it’s obvious that Peter’s anger is growing due to Emily disobeying him. He can’t take it and wants Jake and Roy to join his mission to take all of Emily’s friends and anyone that gets in their way out. We then see how ruthless Peter is when Jake doesn’t want to be part of his plan.
Peter with his not much of a choice sidekick Roy head out to find the girls. For the remainder of the film it’s a continuation of the girls bonding and having fun, but now with Peter in the vicinity and taking out his first victims, the tension quickly builds. One by one he starts killing everyone and in one case two at the same time. Peter occasionally mentally toys with his victims before killing them. Peter’s a slasher with his butcher knife, but also a hammerer, ax murderer, strangler, and even a tree limb whacker. His kills are brutal and several times the victims are shown suffering which adds to the cringing moments and of course you have to appreciate a blood splatter on the camera lens moment.
The length of the film was perfect, too many times films will drag it out to get to 90 minutes, but Dark Forest did what it had to and ended, so there’s no drawn out scenes. Plus, there was a bit of a cliffhanger at the end, a reminisce of the ending of Friday the 13th Part 4.
Tons of credit goes to the entire crew, Roger Boyer the writer and director, and especially the cast who all did an excellent job in each of their roles and coming across as regular people, no overacting, and their actions toward the killer come across realistic and there’s some quality fights.
Lastly, and interesting enough, here are some highlights regarding the filming process from concept to distribution. Dark Forest was made by a very determined team and they were constantly making changes and over several years proved many wrong. Initially the film was made for a filmmaking competition in Canada and would be premiered in cinemas across Canada. Dark Forest originally was a “food footage” type film, but when it didn’t get past the first round the producers were more determined than ever to make the film successful. After much discussion and debating, it was decided to make it into a 80’s style slasher film. With nearly no budget the film was made over several weekends, but needed a little more. After a successful crowdfunding campaign they were able to shoot additional scenes and complete the film, so they thought. At that point the film was less than an hour and additional film time was needed. In many cases when filmmakers need to extend the run time there’s obvious drawn out scenes, but to extend Dark Forest they did so by adding more quality kills and action.
The producers took the new version of Dark Forest to the 2014 AFM, but unfortunately went home without any buyers or distributors. It was time to take matters in their own hands knowing they had a great film, so they self-distributed and premiered the film at Landmark Cinemas in Canada. With a highly successful month, beating out some top Hollywood movies, the producers struck up a deal with the Los Angeles based distributor Indie Rights and Dark Films then became available on VOD including Amazon Prime and is due out soon on DVD and Blu-Ray.
Dark Forest is currently available on Amazon Prime, iTunes, Google Play, Canadian Screens, and the Microsoft Store. Keep an eye out for it to be released soon on DVD and Blu-Ray.
Connect with Dark Forest and the team on their social sites:
INSTAGRAM: instagram.com/darkforestfilm2015
TWITTER: @darkforestfilm @zellcopro
FACEBOOK: facebook.com/darkforestmovie facebook.com/ZellcoProductions
WEBSITE: zellcoproductions.com
