Jukaï : La Forêt des suicides

The second installment in the "Horror Village" series by Takashi Shimizu, following "Howling Village." Takashi channeled his Ju-On era by creating a frightening lore surrounding Japan's infamous suicide forest. The out-of-the-box innovative death scenes and a brilliant cast of prettiest girls proved J-horror still got the originality and aesthetics.

When I stumbled upon the 2021 Japanese horror mystery titled "Jukai Mura" (aka "Suicide Forest Village") of course I had to watch it. Sure, I hadn't ever heard about the movie, but I am familiar with the phenomena of the 'suicide forest' in Japan and have seen other movies dealing with it. And given my love of both Asian cinema and horror cinema, of course I had to watch what director Takashi Shimizu had to deliver here.

The movie wasn't off to a good start with the video blogger style of footage. I can't take those self-absorbed people serious, and nor is that style of shooting a movie something that entertains me in any way. And not even 10 minutes into the movie I was good and ready to get up and turn off this laughable footage. But luckily the movie switched back to ordinary movie style around 10 minutes in.

But while the movie returned to normal movie style of shooting, then the narrative just was insanely slow paced and uneventful. I grew more and more bored and distant as the narrative progressed, because there simply wasn't anything interesting happening on the screen. It felt like I was watching a tirade of random scenes shot independently of one another and then pieced together to make a movie.

Of the entire cast ensemble, I was only familiar with actor Jun Kunimura. The acting performances in the movie were a bit bland, because the actors and actresses didn't really have anything solid to work with in terms of character gallery, dialogue or contents of the storyline.

For a Japanese horror movie then director Takashi Shimizu failed to deliver anything worthwhile or watchable with "Jukai Mura". And it most definitely is not a horror movie that I would recommend fans of the Japanese horror scene to rush out and get to watch. Nor is it a movie that I will ever return to watch a second time.

My rating of "Jukai Mura" lands on a generous three out of ten stars, and that is primarily because of the production value of the movie.

This movie has a heavy emphasis on creepy visuals and there are plenty of them here. It doesn't place much emphasis on tell a coherent story or explaining why any of this is happening.

The movie starts with a video from a vlogger going into Aokigahara. She goes off-trail despite the many warnings signs in the actual forest telling you not to do that for good, if mundane, reasons. Something happens to her, It's not clear what. The main characters find an evil creepy box that's cursed with the curse of the forest. What is that? That's a good question. The characters start dying off in various odd ways. They have to figure out the curse. Good luck with that. I have seen the whole movie and I don't know. Jun Kunimura pops up now and then to say vaguely ominous things about the forest but he's barely in the movie.

This movie sort of explains a lot of things but doesn't actually explain them. Later, we find out what happened to the vlogger but not really. We find out what the box is about but it doesn't really explain anything. This movie isn't big on explaining things.

It's worth watching if you are just looking for some creepy visuals and J-horror stuff. Don't expect a coherent story or any explanation of why any of this is happening though.

This film essentially begins with a YouTube blogger by the name of "Akina" (Rinka Otani) recording herself as she enters a thick forest known for the number of people who venture inside to commit suicide. While she is recording, strange things begin to happen, and her screams are the last things anyone hears. The scene then shifts to a teenage girl named "Hibiki Amasawa" (Anna Yamada) watching the video at home and becoming quite disturbed by it. Not long afterward, while helping some friends move into a new apartment, a strange box is found under the house which terrifies Hibiki--and immediately afterward the people around her begin to die in horrific ways. Now, rather than reveal any more, I will just say that I was extremely impressed with this movie--for the first hour or so. Unfortunately, the plot began to drag to such a degree that I almost felt like entering this deadly forest myself. It was almost as if the director (Takashi Shimizu) decided to abandon any pretense of a plot and simply fill in the remaining minutes with special effects instead. That being said, while I don't consider this film to be that bad necessarily, I do consider it to be a missed opportunity, and I have rated it accordingly. Average.

I'm a huge fan of director Shimizu, but this is one of his most least interesting and engaging films since he retreads elements he's done better in previous films. This being said, the film still looks amazing and is atmospheric but it will appeal more for those who haven't seen a ton of his films or a lot of haunted location films. It was an inspired choice to do something slightly different with the subject of the suicide forest but not enough to make it stand out. The cinematography and editing are very good and overall, it is a serviceable film.

All the performances are also decent but nothing really stands out or shines.