The Forest

Belatedly cashing in on the "J-horror" atmosphere it finds so desperately hard to conjure up, first-time director Jason Zada's mediocre menacer has Games of Thrones star Natalie Dormer in its corner and that's about it. She's in Japan looking for her twin sister who has mysteriously disappeared in the Aokigahara forest where - in the real world as well as the imagined - many people go to kill themselves. In that infamous "Sea of Trees" she must face her own inner demons as the spirits of the dead congregate to prey on the depressed and those in emotional turmoil. With the entire story explained in the first five minutes and the inevitable conclusion glaringly obvious to the genre savvy, most of the running time is taken up with Dormer not sticking to all the good advice offered and making one daft life-threatening decision after another. Meanwhile, Zada keeps the tiresome terrors coming, though they're undermined by his consistently formulaic approach.