Forest of Death (2023) [Blu-ray review]

Forest of Death opens on a couple encountering a skinwalker and having a bad time. After that point, their property starts getting rented out to new victims. From there, we start watching the film dive deeper and deeper into old fashioned horror plays. Honestly, I kinda loved it. That’s not an overstatement, as I have been watching a lot of horror movies lately and I can say I’ve maybe enjoyed a dozen horor films or less since 2021.

Skinwalkers don’t make for the typical horror movie

The concept of a Skinwalker allows for you to work around the typical budget eating moves that come with horror. While you have to show gore and capitalize on the FX, creature makeup gets expensive fast. It’s rather creative to stage the terror with something that can look like anyone else. Throw a few sharp edits into the mix and some rather strong regional acting for a great blend.

Modern audiences like to think they are smarter than horror, but they miss the point. There’s nothing different in Forest of Death that wasn’t present in the William Grefe Florida movies or the Boggy Creek films. However, Forest of Death finds itself leaning way more towards the Romero style early days. Hell, you could make the argument that Romero was a regional horror director.

Why am I getting into horror history like this? Well, because the American version of it birthed many movies like this in the middle 20th Century. But, why this style? What makes it so easy to use and adapt throughout all of these years?

What does Forest of Death bring to the table?

Forest of Death matters because it understand what is scary and what works in an era of Pop and Elevated Horror. Both are perversions on trends that date back decades. Elevated horror had its roots in the Pastoral Horror that began in England, while Pop Horror is nothing more than the latest rendition of trends that Carl Laemmle Jr. began at Universal.

What Forest of Death offers a uniquely American horror take. For those unfamiliar, when the studios backed off horror for stretch in the 1960s…most horror went to indie houses such as AIP, Corman’s later outings and the rise of Euro Horror that saw people like Bava and Argento rise to power. In America, if you weren’t Corman or someone of equal prestige, horror was saved by local weirdos picking up cameras and making their stories.

I don’t want to sound hyperbolic, but watching Forest of Death a few times brought me right into the middle of that regional driven horror push. Whether it as indie horror coming out of Wisconsin, Florida, Pennsylvania and Arkansas; Forest of Death follows that proud tradition. While I wasn’t familiar with DBS Films before Forest of Death, I will be checking them out moving forward.

What is on the Blu-ray?

The Forest of Death Blu-ray comes with no special features. However, I find the A/V Quality to be rather impressive. I would have loved a commentary or something to learn more about how the movie was shot. Throughout the movie, I was impressed by the regional horror flair. But, I kept having questions about choices made and where Forest of Death went.

So many will get bungled up trying to shoot holes through the plot. But, they miss the point. Any good horror tale should have a degree of the familiar to it. Shock is new, horror is built upon understood and accepted narratives. I really liked what I saw and I want to see more.

Forest of Death is now available on Blu-ray