The Forest Hills

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.

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.

I had high hopes for this one. I've been looking forward to it for months. Unfortunately, it didn't deliver as much as I wanted it to. The movie stars Rico, and is basically a solo performance. Not saying the actor is bad or anything, just saying I had hoped for more screen time of Eddie Furlong- I'm hoping he makes a full comeback one day. Shelley Duvall is barely in it. Actually paid to rent it off Amazon prime. It wasn't the worst five dollars I've ever spent. If you're an Eddie Furlong or Shelley Duvall fan and you go in with low expectations, you'll have a decent time. Just don't hope for too much.

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.

Oh how i have missed miss Shelley Duvall, i love that she is returning to acting again, she has such a great talent, i love all here movies and she's still got it.

Also who remembers when Edward Fulong was John Conner in Terminator 2, when i heard he was doing this movie together with Shelley Duvall, i mean i was so excited and i was right.

This movie is a must watch, i will not give any spoilers, but this movie is a true gem, if you like outdoorsy movies, with a low key setting, truly highlighting the talents of all the actors, then this is a must watch. I hope Edward Furlong and Shelley Duvall make a lot more movies soon. Please watch!!!