The Forest (2016)

Rating: 6 / 10The Forest was one of the most talked about movies of 2016, due to a large amount of criticism of white washing. Before I start my review, I want to say that, I am a white male. I have Japanese friends. I asked them about this movie before I watched it and they said that the Japanese culture was respected well, and there was no need for a whitewashing call on this movie.This wasn't as good as I was expecting. The way it was hyped up throughout 2016 in reviews and talk of those who had seen the movie, I was expecting a solid 10/10 from opening credits to end credits. It wasn't that great. At all.First of all, don't get me wrong. I found it quite enjoyable to watch. I was creeped out quite a bit. Some of it really had me on edge. Some of it made me cackle at how bad it was. Let's be real - the tunnel creatures? The CGI on those was horrendous and I didn't even feel bad laughing as Sarah ran in terror.There are a lot of interesting theories surrounding this, and a lot of them make sense, but at the end of the day, without the knowledge of the different theories, the film doesn't make a lot of sense, especially at the end. I wasn't keen, I got very confused through a lot of it, and there could have been a LOT MORE done to ensure that it wasn't confusing. Things could have been cut out, other things could have been done better and it would have made the film a lot easier to follow.The ending? I'm sick of the last few seconds of cliché of a character jumping at the screen. That's one thing this movie did really, really badly - this film overused horror clichés to the point of it just being embarrassing.All in all though, it was quite scary, it had me on edge, and I found it to be quite unnerving, when it wasn't being embarrassing.