Forest Of Lost Souls, The (2017)
Matt Boiselle
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Starring Daniela Love, Jorge Mota, Mafalda Banquart
Directed by Jose Pedro Lopes
Director Jose Pedro Lopes’s latest art-style thriller, The Forest Of Lost Souls takes a subject as depressing and horrific as suicide, and tosses it headlong into the woods, using metric tons of doom and gloom to enforce its story.
Starring Jorge Mota as a disconsolate man who has wandered into the lush, taciturn wildwood in Portugal that has entertained the ending of many a lost life. His sadness at “failing his family” has led him here, and his end-goal is to cease his existence in this sweeping stretch of eerie timber, until he meets a young woman (Love) who’s also there for the same thing. She appears to have all the answers that he’s looking for, and the two engage in a dialogue that almost seems to take on a patient/counselor relationship, all the while it’s apparent that death clearly awaits him. What materializes is somewhat of a friendship, but after a short time it’s clear to see that one of these people is not who they appear to be, and that’s when things get a bit interesting.
What starts off as a reflective-dramatic/thriller, rapidly accelerates towards the psycho-killer sub-set, and that’s where I found myself ready to tune out. The overwhelming sadness and despair that infected the film (in a good sense) took a back seat to the old “lunatic on the loose” track, and it’s not to say that it completely overshadowed the integrity of the film, but it lessened the impact for me by a country mile. Performances from both Love and Mota were genuine and held your sympathetic ear, and fit nicely into their respective stories – at times, it felt as if you were taking that walk into the potential afterlife, and Lopes should be commended for his framing and eyes when it came to certain avenues that he used to lay out the direction in which the movie was executed. In closing, I can recommend the film as a one-timer for those who are wanting to check out a gray, moody and contemplative film that attacks a very serious subject…and for those who want a little murder, it’s there for you too, ya demented freaks.
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Film
Categorized:Reviews
