The Forest Hills

I feel like a lot of the people will misunderstand this movie on the first viewing. The poster would lead you to believe that it's a supernatural werewolf film, when really it's a look into someone's rapid mental deterioration into madness. There are solid performances from the cast, especially Shelly Duval in what would be her last film role. But also a surprisingly nuanced performance from Edward Furlong. The narrative is possibly the biggest dealbreaker for people and it's uneven and confusing, but it's told from an unreliable narrator. Go in it with an open mind and solve the puzzle yourself.

I was excited to see Shelly's last performance. That excitement ended within about 2 minutes of watching the movie. The acting is terrible, the writing is nonsensical, and there's not much positive to say about this movie. There were 3 other people in the theater. They walked out about 20 minutes into it. My wife and I followed suit about 10 mins after they walked out. I can't recall the last time I walked out of a movie.

I'm saddened that this is Shelly's last movie. She was a wonderful actor, and she deserved so much more.

This movie goes to show that big names do not equate to a good movie. .

Shelley Duvall (rest her soul) and Edward Furlong. Yes they're in it and they add very little. One of the worst movies I've seen in my life. They're a few scenes of dialog that make me laugh and I'm not sure it's intentional. Other than that there's not much to offer and I can't believe I watched this in theatres. The fact that there were 4 people in the theatre including me says something. It's not worth a watch and in my humble opinion it's a disgrace to Edward Furlong career and the memory of Duvall. It's not even campy good it's just a waste of space. I think they used Duvall and Furlong's names to increase the popularity of this movie. Trash.

After hearing of her cancer prognosis, her son begins caring for her to help bond over their final moments together which only results in a spiraling session where his mental deterioration state manages to get him in bigger trouble than he expected due to the lack of care he receives.

This was a generally troubling indie effort. Among its better aspects is the solid psychological build-up of the estranged relationship at the core of the film that's slowly unveiled within this one. As we get bits about the relationship between him and his mother that starts bringing about the idea of the psychological issues within him as well and we get further scenes involving his feverish beliefs in him being a werewolf that inflicts his entire life. With that spurred on by a traumatic incident itself and slowly causing his life to spiral rapidly with plenty of different examples brought about by his interactions with family or a mental-help support group that only further his mindset and condition. Knowing what we do about him throughout the film and how everything sets off a murderous instinct within him, the bloodsoaked rampage in the final half makes a lot of sense involving some graphic moments as his snapped behavior sets everything in motion. However, there's one main overriding factor against it in that these have to be done to a figure that we're sympathetic to and care about for everything to have the most impact. Here, we never get that with a rushed setup with everything taking place at such a rapid onslaught of imagery and setpieces that it's impossible to get a handle on what's going on as the interactions with his mom come out of nowhere and have little emotional resonance to them immediately getting introduced to an antagonistic relationship that has no stakes. It doesn't make much of an effort to introduce anything sympathetic about him or explain away the horrific visions and hallucinations he suffers from so everything simply hangs around with little rhyme or motivation since everything is so ambiguous about being real or in his head. Had this been given a more proper introduction at the start, there would've been more of an impact as his mental stage constantly deteriorates the longer he goes on so this context goes a long way towards helping this one out.

Rated Unrated/R: Graphic Language and Graphic Violence.

The Forest Hills is little more than another forgettable, incredibly amateurishly-made horror film that does nothing to separate itself apart from countless other microbudget horror movies you'll find on Plex or Roku.

Admittedly, the only reason you've heard of this one is because it features Edward Furlong, Dee Wallace, Felissa Rose and Shelley Duvall in the final role of her career (and her first role in twenty years). Duvall is honestly the highlight, portraying a sympathetic character with natural charisma during very brief time on screen. But as for the rest of the movie, it was such a scattershot vision with no clear direction.

This movie was lost on whether it wanted to be a genuine horror movie or some kind of Lovecraftian fan fiction and it failed to ever stay on any of the paths it tried to set itself upon. The result was scattered, unfocused, talkative, slow and worst of all boring. And even at a brief 79 minutes it felt all too long, so I couldn't even make it to the end.