HOLLYWOOD—Summer is a time for big money movies, and with all the huge releases this year it would be easy to miss a low key gem like “Into The Forest.” Fortunately, you don’t have to, and if you’re a wise film connoisseur you’ll give this scary, well acted bit of speculative fiction a chance.
The plot involves a continental or perhaps even worldwide blackout that leaves Nell (Ellen Page), her sister Eva (Evan Rachel Wood), and their father Robert (Callum Keith Rennie) without modern conveniences in their remote home in the woods. As the blackout goes from days to weeks to months, the sisters try to find a way to survive a far harsher world in the midst of collapse.
It has to be acknowledged that the film is elevated to a large degree by Page and Wood’s first rate acting. The focus is wisely on the characters who are affected by the disaster it in a vein similar to the fantastic AMC drama “The Walking Dead,” as opposed to the disaster itself. The beautifully rendered relationship between the two sisters is a focal point. It is loving and protective, but pierced with bouts of tension and depression. Page and Wood are great in both key scenes and smaller ones that bring out the minuet sufferings of their situation. I have to hand it to Wood for her superb dancing in scenes that add a dreamy, lamenting quality to the film. Page is tremendous whether it’s a love scene, angrily protecting her sister, caring for her, or even getting drunk. I think Rennie deserves some credit to. He portrays the kind, loving father believably and without any schmaltz.
The movie features outstanding music that emphasizes the hardships of the situation and adds to that aforementioned dreamy lament. Cinematographer Daniel Grant does an excellent job, and in the scenes involving fire I think he moves from excellent to truly outstanding.
What makes “Into The Forest” really special is that it is a superb contribution to a certain category of films. I wouldn’t classify them as horror per se as their focus is not on carnivorous animals, Rob Zombie type psychopaths, nightmarish imagery, ghost, vampires, or supernatural creatures. It’s the type of horror that comes from the realization that modern society is fundamentally fragile. It doesn’t romanticize the loss of it either, at least not in any significant way. Stand outs in this genre include the terrifying, horribly underrated nuclear war film “Threads” and the underappreciated drama “Blindness.”
One of the pertinent themes addressed in both “Threads” and “Into The Forest” is the overreliance on technology. In the later, we see a near future world where the seeming addiction to pads, phones, and computers slightly more advanced than our own is all to recognizable. When these devices are rendered useless by the blackout we see the emotional toll it takes on the main characters. Beyond that we see how hard life is without the modern agricultural, medical, and communications achievements of science and technology. In “Threads,” we are told in an opening monologue about the danger posed by the possibility of the strings that hold such a fragile society together being cut. It’s telling that the lead characters in both films face similar hardships like the loss of modern medical care when pregnant. It’s as if we know that such important things can be taken from us, and we share a collective, unspoken anxiety. The films each feature a different disaster, but they lead to a similar place. One might think this is repetitive, but I find it interesting. Two different characters amidst a collapse that leads towards a same place reminds us of what we need to preserve and why. It’s also a way of recognizing and emphasizing new societal problems to the audience as they arise with time.
Speaking of similarities between these films it is worth noting a huge element in all of them is violence against women with all three prominently feature disturbing rape scenes. It’s an interesting commentary on society and collapse. As we’ve moved forward institutionally and technologically we’ve come to recognize and guard the rights and liberties of oppressed groups such as women. When society is destroyed, law and order has broken down, and communications made difficult it allows those who are so inclined to commit atrocity without any great fear of reprisal.
It’s interesting that in all these films violence against women coincides with the plot’s, and society’s, lowest point. In “Threads,” it happens years after the nuclear war and society is still a shadow of its former self, in “Blindness” it’s when the prison is taken over by a tyrant and women are demanded as tribute, and in “Into The Forest” it seems to come at the point when we know that society is never going back to normal. It does us well when our movies remind us that we are at our lowest when women are at their most brutalized, and justice is at its most unattainable. It is also a reminder that disasters and conflict fall especially hard on women. Don’t believe me? Just ask the women in Darfur, in Berlin under Soviet occupation, or women raped in the aftermath of any number of recent natural disasters. Indeed, civilization in these films are marked by its just treatment of women, and the loss of this is rightly seen as not just a setback but a catastrophe.
I think this movie also reminds us that we are not so far from such a dystopia. Whether it’s nuclear war, a bizarre pandemic, or in this case a catastrophic failure of the power grid we can descend into madness more easily than we would like to believe. We see in this film all sorts of chilling scenes, but one that was very striking was when the sisters and their father stop to help some motorists and they menace the trio with guns. I couldn’t help but be reminded of incidents from our present reality, Hurricane Katrina not least among them. Again it comes down to that loss of society, and despite its many flaws, those good and noble structures that are a part of it. Without it we are left to a kind of social Darwinism, a menacing and unjust rule by the gun, and we know from the previously mentioned parts of this film that there is no lack of villains who will take advantage of it. Yes, it will rise again. Yes, not all people will take advantage of the chaos, but many people will suffer in the interim.
If there was any flaw in this film it was the ending. I wasn’t mad for it. It was a bit to neat, and a little to romantic towards the natural world. I applaud the film for somewhat subverting this in a very good hunting scene the difficulty of unaccustomed people surviving in the wild ala the Jack London short story “How to Build a Fire.” However, the end kind of gave the message that we don’t need our technological advancements, that we have and can survive without them. True, but life would be a lot worse. That isn’t made clear enough. I think what is made clear is that we should personally take a bit of time to prepare ourselves for a disaster, but more importantly spend a lot of time as a society making sure we are ready with added redundancy for anything that threatens a catastrophic collapse.
In the end, I think the film does hit the mark with its very relevant message and beautifully portrayed relationship between the two sisters. As we are shown the horrors of a societal collapse we still see the tenderness, love, and caring people are capable of. Wood and Page’s performances are the greatest parts of the film. It’s a movie worth watching to both appreciate its aesthetic qualities and its message.
