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.

This is not a good movie. The actors in this movie are not good. There are some famous names in this movie. They do not do a good job. Some people rated this movie 10 stars. These are not smart people. 10 stars means this movie is almost perfect, a classic like The Godfather, ET, Jaws, etc. This movie is nowhere close to any of those.

This feels like a totally amateur affair. This is not always a bad thing but, in this case, it is. The concept is fine and I actually like the idea, but the execution is a bit off. Even the performances of the seasoned actors are flat and uninspired. The special effects are decent enough but it's not enough to make this worth watching.

Okay, It's Shelley Duvall's last performance. She played Mama whose son, Rico, is a mess of a human being. He is either a monster or damaged beyond repair. The film especially the writing doesn't make anything clear for the viewers. I would have only seen it for Shelley's final performance. It's a shame that she didn't do more. The script and the storylines don't make sense to me as a viewer. I truly have no idea what is really going on with the main character, Rico. The actor who played Rico does an admirable job. I just wished he cleaned up a little bit. Dee Wallace has a tiny role as his boss. The other characters just don't make any sense. I see this film is dedicated to horror film directors. It's an independent so you can't be too harsh on it. Independent films don't have the budget. The film made me realize how much we missed Shelley Duvall after all these years.

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.

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.